HUSH  I 


I 


lit* 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 


IN  MEMORY  OF 

PROFESSOR  WILLIAM  MERRILL 

AND 

MRS.  IMOGENE  MERRILL 


First  and  Last  Things 

A  Confession  of  Faith  and  a 
Rule  of  Life 


By 

H.  G.Wells 


Author  of  "  New  Worlds  for  Old,"  "  The  Time  Machine," 

"  The  War  of  the  Worlds,"  "  The  Future 

in  America,"  etc. 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 
New  York  and  London 
Gbe  Imfcfcerboc&ec  press 


GIFT  %  v 


Copyright,  igo8 

BY 

H.  G.  WELLS 


Ube  Tknicfcerbochcr  press,  flew  J?orft 


CONTENTS. 


Introduction        ..... 

BOOK  THE  FIRST. 
metaphysics. 
The  Necessity  for  Metaphysics  . 
The  Resumption  of  Metaphysical  Enquiry 
The  World  of  Fact 
Scepticism  of  the  Instrument 

The  Classificatory  Assumption 

Empty  Terms 

Negative  Terms  . 

Logic  Static  and  Life  Kinetic 

Planes  and  Dialects  of  Thought 

Practical  Conclusions  from  these  Consid 
erations        ..... 

Beliefs        ...... 

Summary      ...... 

iii 


PAGE 

I 


9 

13 
15 
19 
22 

3i 
33 
37 
39 

44 
55 
59 


Mcoor;^ 


IV 


Contents 


BOOK  THE  SECOND. 

of  belief. 

My  Primary  Act  of  Faith     . 

On  Using  the  Name  of  God 

Free- Will  and  Predestination    . 

A  Picture  of  the  World  of  Men. 

The  Problem  of  Motives  the  Real  Problem 
of  Life  ..... 

A  Review  of  Motives  .... 

The  Synthetic  Motive 

The  Being  of  Mankind 

Individuality  an  Interlude 

The  Mystic  Element    .... 

The  Synthesis      ..... 

Of  Personal  Immortality    . 

A  Criticism  of  Christianity 

Of  Other  Religions     .... 


65 
68 

7i 

74 

78 
81 

87 

91 
96 

104 
107 
109 
112 
120 


BOOK  THE  THIRD. 
of  general  conduct. 
Conduct  Follows  from  Belief     > 
What  Is  Good      .... 
Socialism     ..... 


125 
127 

129 


Contents 


A  Criticism  op  Certain  Forms  of  Socialism 

Hate  and  Love    ..... 

The  Preliminary  Social  Duty 

Wrong  Ways  of  Living 

Social    Parasitism    and    Contemporary    In 
justices  ..... 

The  Case  of  the  Wife  and  Mother 

Associations         ..... 

Of  an  Organised  Brotherhood     . 

Concerning  New  States  and  New  Religions 

The  Idea  of  the  Church 

Of  Secession 

A  Dilemma  . 

A  Comment 

War    .... 

War  and  Competition 

Modern  War 

Of  Abstinences  and  Disciplines 

On  Forgetting,  and  the  Need  of  Prayer 
Reading,  Discussion  and  Worship 

Democracy  and  Aristocracy 

On  Debts  of  Honour  . 


•  133 

142 

.   148 

•   154 

- 

•   157 

162 

167 

•   173 

189 

.   194 

202 

207 

211 

.   213 

217 

.   223 

.   228 

•   234 

•   239 

•   244 

VI 


Contents 


The  Idea  of  Justice     . 

Of  Love  and  Justice    . 

The  Weakness  of  Immaturity 

Possibility  of  a  New  Etiquette 

Sex 

The  Institution  of  Marriage 

Conduct  in  Relation  to  the  Thing  that  Is 

Conduct  towards  Transgressions 

BOOK  THE  FOURTH. 

SOME  PERSONAL  THINGS. 

Personal  Love  and  Life 

The  Nature  of  Love   .... 

The  Will  to  Love        .... 

Love  and  Death  ..... 

The  Consolation  of  Failure 

The  Last  Confession  .... 


PAG* 
247 

252 

255 

259 

261 

265 

277 
280 


285 
288 
296 
298 
303 
305 


First  and  Last  Things 


First  and  Last  Things. 


INTRODUCTION. 

Recently  I  set  myself  to  put  down  what  I 
believe.  I  did  this  with  no  idea  of  making  a 
book,  but  at  the  suggestion  of  a  friend  and  to 
interest  a  number  of  friends  with  whom  I  was 
associated.  We  were  all,  we  found,  extremely 
uncertain  in  our  outlook  upon  life,  about  our 
religious  feelings  and  in  our  ideas  of  right  and 
wrong.  And  yet  we  reckoned  ourselves  people 
of  the  educated  class  and  some  of  us  talk  and 
lecture  and  write  with  considerable  confidence. 
We  thought  it  would  be  of  very  great  interest  to 
ourselves  and  each  other  if  we  made  some  sort 
of  frank  mutual  confession.  We  arranged  to 
hold  a  series  of  meetings  in  which  first  one  and 
then  another  explained  the  faith,  so  far  as  he 
understood  it,  that  was  in  him.  We  astonished 
ourselves  and  our  hearers  by  the  irregular  and 


2  First  and  Last  Things 

fragmentary  nature  of  the  creeds  we  produced, 
clotted  at  one  point,  inconsecutive  at  another, 
inconsistent  and  unconvincing  to  a  quite  unex- 
pected degree.  It  would  not  be  difficult  to 
caricature  one  of  those  meetings;  the  lecturer 
floundering  about  with  an  air  of  exquisite  illumi- 
nation, the  audience  attentive  with  an  expression 
of  thwarted  edification  upon  its  various  brows. 
For  my  own  part  I  grew  so  interested  in  planning 
my  lecture  and  in  joining  up  point  and  point, 
that  my  notes  soon  outran  the  possibilities  of  the 
hour  or  so  of  meeting  for  which  I  was  preparing 
them.  The  meeting  got  only  a  few  fragments  of 
what  I  had  to  say,  and  made  what  it  could  of 
them.  And  after  that  was  over  I  let  myself 
loose  from  limits  of  time  and  length  altogether 
and  have  expanded  these  memoranda  into  a 
book. 

It  is  as  it  stands  now  the  frank  confession  of 
what  one  man  of  the  early  Twentieth  Century 
has  found  in  life  and  himself,  a  confession  just 
as  frank  as  the  limitations  of  his  character  per- 
mit; it  is  his  metaphysics,  his  religion,  his  moral 
standards,  his  uncertainties  and  the  expedients 
with  which  he  has  met  them.  On  every  one  of 
these  departments  and  aspects  I  write — how 
shall  I  put  it? — as  an  amateur.     In  every  section 


Introduction  3 

of  my  subject  there  are  men  not  only  of  far 
greater  intellectual  power  and  energy  than  I, 
but  who  have  devoted  their  whole  lives  to  the 
sustained  analysis  of  this  or  that  among  the 
questions  I  discuss,  and  there  is  a  literature  so 
enormous  in  the  aggregate  that  only  a  specialist 
scholar  could  hope  to  know  it.  I  have  not  been 
unmindful  of  these  professors  and  this  literature; 
I  have  taken  such  opportunities  as  I  have  found, 
to  test  my  propositions  by  them.  But  I  feel 
that  such  apology  as  one  makes  for  amateurish- 
ness in  this  field  has  a  lesser  quality  of  self-con- 
demnation than  if  one  were  dealing  with  narrower, 
more  defined  and  fact-laden  matters.  There  is 
more  excuse  for  one  here  than  for  the  amateur 
maker  of  chemical  theories,  or  the  man  who 
evolves  a  system  of  surgery  in  his  leisure.  These 
things,  chemistry,  surgery  and  so  forth,  we  may 
take  on  the  reputation  of  our  expert,  but  our 
fundamental  beliefs,  our  rules  of  conduct,  we 
must  all  make  for  ourselves.  We  may  listen 
and  read,  but  the  views  of  others  we  cannot 
take  on  credit;  we  must  rethink  them  and  "make 
them  our  own."  And  we  cannot  do  without 
fundamental  beliefs,  explicit  or  implicit.  The 
bulk  of  men  are  obliged  to  be  amateur  phi- 
losophers,— all  men  indeed  who  are  not  special- 


4  First  and  Last  Things 

ised  students  of  philosophical  subjects, — even 
if  their  philosophical  enterprise  goes  no  further 
than  prompt  recognition  of  and  submission  to 
Authority. 

And  it  is  not  only  the  claim  of  the  specialist 
that  I  would  repudiate.  People  are  too  apt  to 
suppose  that  in  order  to  discuss  morals  a  man 
must  have  exceptional  moral  gifts.  I  would 
dispute  that  naive  supposition.  I  am  an  in- 
genuous enquirer  with,  I  think,  some  capacity 
for  religious  feeling  but  neither  a  prophet  nor 
a  saint.  On  the  whole  I  should  be  inclined  to 
classify  myself  as  a  bad  man  rather  than  a  good ; 
not  indeed  as  any  sort  of  picturesque  scoundrel 
or  non-moral  expert,  but  as  a  person  frequently 
irritable,  ungenerous  and  forgetful,  and  inter- 
mittently and  in  small  but  definite  ways,  bad. 
One  thing  I  claim,  I  have  got  my  beliefs  and 
theories  out  of  my  life  and  not  fitted  them  to  its 
circumstances.  As  often  as  not  I  have  learnt 
good  by  the  method  of  difference,  by  the  taste  of 
the  alternative.  I  tell  this  faith  I  hold  as  I  hold 
it  and  I  sketch  out  the  principles  by  which  I  am 
generally  trying  to  direct  my  life  at  the  present 
time,  because  it  interests  me  to  do  so  and  I  think 
it  may  interest  a  certain  number  of  similarly 
constituted  people.     I  am  not  teaching.     How 


Introduction  5 

far  I  succeed  or  fail  in  that  private  and  personal 
attempt  to  explain  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
matter  of  this  book.  That  is  another  story,  a 
reserved  and  private  affair.  I  offer  simply  in- 
tellectual experiences  and  ideas. 

It  will  be  necessary  to  take  up  the  most  ab- 
stract of  these  questions  of  belief  first.  It  may 
be  that  to  many  readers  the  opening  sections 
may  seem  the  driest  and  least  attractive.  But 
I  would  ask  them  to  begin  at  the  beginning  and 
read  straight  on,  because  much  that  follows  this 
metaphysical  book  cannot  be  appreciated  at  its 
proper  value  without  a  grasp  of  these  preliminaries. 


Book  the  First. 

Metaphysics. 


1 1. 


The  Necessity  for  Metaphysics. — As  a  pre- 
liminary to  that  experiment  in  mutual  confession 
from  which  this  book  arose,  I  found  it  necessary 
to  consider  and  state  certain  truths  about  the 
nature  of  knowledge,  about  the  meaning  of  truth 
and  the  value  of  words;  that  is  to  say  I  found  I 
had  to  begin  by  being  metaphysical.  In  writing 
out  these  notes  now  I  think  it  is  well  that  I 
should  state  just  how  important  I  think  this 
metaphysical  prelude  is. 

There  is  a  popular  prejudice  against  meta- 
physics as  something  at  once  difficult  and  fruit- 
less, as  an  idle  system  of  enquiries  remote  from 
any  human  interest.  I  suppose  this  odd  mis- 
conception arose  from  the  vulgar  pretensions  of 
the  learned,  from  their  appeal  to  ancient  names 
and  their  quotations  in  unfamiliar  tongues,  and 
from  the  easy  fall  into  technicality  of  men  strug- 
gling to  be  explicit  where  a  high  degree  of  ex- 
plicitness  is  impossible.  But  it  needs  erudition 
and  an  accumulated  and  alien  literature  to  make 
metaphysics    obscure,    and    some    of    the    most 

9 


io  First  and  Last  Things 

fruitful  and  able  metaphysical  discussion  in  the 
world  was  conducted  by  a  number  of  unhampered 
men  in  small  Greek  cities,  who  knew  no  language 
but  their  own  and  had  scarcely  a  technical  term. 
The  true  metaphysician  is  after  all  only  a  person 
who  says,  "Now  let  us  take  thought  for  a  mo- 
ment before  we  fall  into  a  discussion  of  the  broad 
questions  of  life,  lest  we  rush  hastily  into  im- 
possible and  needless  conflict.  What  is  the  exact 
value  of  these  things  we  are  thinking  and  these 
words  we  are  using?"  He  wants  to  take  thought 
about  thought.  Those  other  ardent  spirits,  on 
the  contrary,  want  to  plunge  into  action  or  con- 
troversy or  belief  without  taking  thought;  they 
feel  that  there  is  not  time  to  examine  thought. 
"While  you  think,"  they  say,  "the  house  is 
burning."  They  are  the  kin  of  those  who  rush 
and  struggle  and  make  panics  in  theatre  fires. 

Now  it  seems  to  me  that  most  of  the  troubles 
of  humanity  are  really  misunderstandings.  Men's 
compositions  and  characters  are,  I  think,  more 
similar  than  their  views,  and  if  they  had  not 
needlessly  different  modes  of  expression  upon 
many  broad  issues,  they  would  be  practically  at 
one  upon  a  hundred  issues  where  now  they 
widely  differ. 

Most  of  the  great  controversies  of  the  world, 


Metaphysics  1 1 

most  of  the  wide  religious  differences  that  keep 
men  apart,  arise  from  this,  from  differences  in 
their  way  of  thinking.  Men  imagine  they  stand 
on  the  same  ground  and  mean  the  same  thing 
by  the  same  words,  whereas  they  stand  on 
slightly  different  grounds,  use  different  terms 
for  the  same  thing  and  express  the  same  thing 
in  different  words.  Logomachies,  conflicts  about 
words,  into  such  death-traps  of  effort  those  ardent 
spirits  run  and  perish. 

This  is  now  almost  a  commonplace,  it  has  been 
said  before  by  numberless  people.  It  has  been 
said  before  by  numberless  people,  but  it  seems 
to  me  it  has  been  realised  by  very  few — and 
until  it  is  realised  to  the  fullest  extent,  we  shall 
continue  to  live  at  intellectual  cross  purposes 
and  waste  the  forces  of  our  species  needlessly 
and  abundantly. 

This  persuasion  is  a  very  important  thing  in 
my  mind. 

I  think  that  the  time  has  come  when  the 
human  mind  must  take  up  metaphysical  dis- 
cussion again — when  it  must  resume  those  sub- 
tle but  necessary  and  unavoidable  problems 
that  it  dropped  unsolved  at  the  close  of  the 
period  of  Greek  freedom,  when  it  must  get  to  a 
common  and  general  understanding  upon  what 


12  First  and  Last  Things 

its  ideas  of  truth,  good  and  beauty  amount  to, 
and  upon  the  relation  of  the  Name  to  the  Thing, 
and  of  the  relation  of  one  Mind  to  another  Mind 
in  the  matter  of  resemblance  and  the  matter  of 
difference — upon  all  those  issues  the  young  science 
student  is  apt  to  dismiss  as  Rot,  and  the  young 
classical  student  as  Gas,  and  the  austere  student 
of  the  science  of  Economics  as  Theorising,  un- 
suitable for  his  methods  of  research. 

In  our  achievement  of  understandings  in  the 
place  of  these  evasions  about  fundamental  things 
lies  the  road,  I  believe,  along  which  the  human 
mind  can  escape,  if  ever  it  is  to  escape,  from  the 
confusion  of  purposes  that  distracts  it  at  the 
present  time. 


§2- 


The  Resumption  of  Metaphysical  Enquiry. 
— It  seems  to  me  that  the  Greek  mind  up  to  the 
disaster  of  the  Macedonian  Conquest  was  elabo- 
rately and  discursively  discussing  these  questions 
of  the  forms  and  methods  of  thought  and  that 
the  discussion  was  abruptly  closed  and  not  nat- 
urally concluded,  summed  up  hastily  as  it  were, 
in  the  career  and  lecturings  of  Aristotle. 

Since  then  the  world  never  effectually  reopened 
these  questions  until  the  modern  period.  It  went 
on  from  Plato  and  Aristotle  just  as  the  art  of  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  went  on 
from  Raphael  and  Michael  Angelo.  Effectual 
criticism  was  absolutely  silent  until  the  Renais- 
sance, and  then  for  a  time  was  but  a  matter  of 
scattered  utterances  having  only  the  slightest 
collective  effect.  In  the  past  half  century  there 
has  begun  a  more  systematic  movement  to  affect 
the  general  mind,  a  movement  analogous  to  the 
Pre-Raphaelite  movement  in  art — a  Pre-Aristo- 
telian    movement,    a    scepticism    about    things 

supposed  to  be  settled  for  all  time,  a  resumed 

13 


14  First  and  Last  Things 

enquiry  into  the  fundamental  laws  of  thought,  a 
harking  back  to  positions  of  the  older  philosophers 
and  particularly  to  Heraclitus  so  far  as  the  sur- 
viving fragments  of  his  teaching  enable  us  to 
understand  him,  and  a  new  forward  movement 
from  that  recovered  ground. 


§3- 


The  World  of  Fact. — Necessarily  when  one 
begins  an  enquiry  into  the  fundamental  nature 
of  oneself  and  one's  mind  and  its  processes,  one 
is  forced  into  autobiography.  I  begin  by  asking 
how  the  conscious  mind  with  which  I  am  prone 
to  identify  myself,  began. 

It  presents  itself  to  me  as  a  history  of  a  per- 
ception of  a  world  of  facts  opening  out  from  an 
accidental  centre  at  which  I  happened  to  begin. 

I  do  not  attempt  to  define  this  word  fact. 
Fact  expresses  for  me  something  in  its  nature 
primary  and  unanalysable.  I  start  from  that. 
I  take  as  a  typical  statement  of  fact  that  I  sit 
here  at  my  desk  writing  with  a  fountain  pen  on  a 
pad  of  ruled  scribbling  paper,  that  the  sunlight 
falls  upon  me  and  throws  the  shadow  of  the 
window  mullion  across  the  page,  that  Peter,  my 
cat,  sleeps  on  the  window-seat  close  at  hand 
and  that  this  agate  paper-weight  with  the  silver 
top  holds  my  loose  memoranda  together.  Out- 
side is  a  patch  of  lawn  and  then  a  fringe  of  winter- 
bitten  iris  leaves  and  then  the  sea,  greatly  wrinkled 

15 


16  First  and  Last  Things 

and  astir  under  the  south-west  wind.  There  is 
a  boat  going  out  which  I  think  may  be  Jim  Pain's, 
but  of  that  I  cannot  be  sure.     .     .     . 

These  are  statements  of  a  certain  quality,  a 
quality  that  extends  through  a  huge  universe 
in  which  I  find  myself  placed. 

I  try  to  recall  how  this  world  of  fact  arose  in 
my  mind.  It  began  with  a  succession  of  limited 
immediate  scenes  and  of  certain  minutely  per- 
ceived persons;  I  recall  an  underground  kitchen 
with  a  drawered  table,  a  window  looking  up  at  a 
grating,  a  back-yard  in  which,  growing  out  by 
a  dust-bin,  was  a  grape-vine,  a  red-papered  room 
with  a  bookcase  over  my  father's  shop,  the  dusty 
aisles  and  fixtures,  the  regiments  of  wine-glasses 
and  tumblers,  the  rows  of  hanging  mugs  and 
jugs,  the  towering  edifices  of  jampots,  the  tea 
and  dinner  and  toilet  sets  in  that  emporium,  its 
brighter  side  of  cricket  goods,  of  pads  and  balls 
and  stumps.  Out  of  the  window  one  peeped  at 
the  more  exterior  world,  the  High  Street  in 
front,  the  tailor's  garden,  the  butcher's  yard,  the 
churchyard  and  Bromley  church  tower  behind; 
and  one  was  taken  on  expeditions  to  fields  and 
open  places.  This  limited  world  was  peopled  with 
certain  familiar  presences,  mother  and  father, 
two   brothers,    the   evasive   but   interesting  cat, 


Metaphysics  1 7 

and  by  intermittent  people  of  a  livelier  but  more 
transient  interest,  customers  and  callers. 

Such  was  my  opening  world  of  fact,  and  each 
day  it  enlarged  and  widened  and  had  more  things 
added  to  it.  I  had  soon  won  my  way  to  speech 
and  was  hearing  of  facts  beyond  my  visible  world 
of  fact.  Presently  I  was  at  a  Dame's  school  and 
learning  to  read. 

From  the  centre  of  that  little  world  as  primary, 
as  the  initiatory  material,  my  perception  of  the 
world  of  fact  widened  and  widened  by  new  sights 
and  sounds,  by  reading  and  hearing  descriptions 
and  histories,  by  guesses  and  inferences;  my  curi- 
osity and  interest,  my  appetite  for  fact,  grew  by 
what  it  fed  upon,  I  carried  on  my  expansion  of 
the  world  of  fact  until  it  took  me  through  the 
mineral  and  fossil  galleries  of  the  Natural  His- 
tory Museum,  through  the  geological  drawers  of 
the  College  of  Science,  through  a  year  of  dissec- 
tion and  some  weeks  at  the  astronomical  telescope. 
So  I  built  up  my  conceptions  of  a  real  world  out 
of  facts  observed  and  out  of  inferences  of  a  nature 
akin  to  fact,  of  a  world  immense  and  enduring 
receding  interminably  into  space  and  time.  In 
that  I  found  myself  placed,  a  creature  relatively 
infinitesimal,  needing  and  struggling.  It  was 
clear  to  me,  by  a  hundred  considerations,  that  I 


1 8  First  and  Last  Things 

in  my  body  upon  this  planet  Earth,  was  the  out- 
come of  countless  generations  of  conflict  and 
begetting,  the  creature  of  natural  selection,  the 
heir  of  good  and  bad  engendered  in  that  struggle. 
So  my  world  of  fact  shaped  itself.  I  find  it 
altogether  impossible  to  question  or  doubt  that 
world  of  fact.  Particular  facts  one  may  ques- 
tion as  facts.  For  instance,  I  think  I  see  an 
unseasonable  yellow  wallflower  from  my  windows, 
but  you  may  dispute  that  and  show  it  is  only  a 
broken  end  of  iris  leaf  accidentally  lit  to  yellow. 
That  is  merely  a  substitution  of  fact  for  fact. 
One  may  doubt  whether  one  is  perceiving  or 
remembering  or  telling  facts  clearly,  but  the 
persuasion  that  there  are  facts,  independent  of 
one's  persuasion  and  obdurate  to  one's  will,  re- 
mains invincible. 


4- 


Scepticism  of  the  Instrument. — At  first  I 
took  the  world  of  fact  as  being  exactly  as  I  per- 
ceived it.  I  believed  my  eyes.  Seeing  was  be- 
lieving I  thought.  Still  more  did  I  believe  my 
reasoning.  It  was  only  slowly  that  I  began  to 
suspect  that  the  world  of  fact  could  be  anything 
different  from  the  clear  picture  it  made  upon 
my  mind. 

I  realised  the  inadequacy  of  the  senses  first. 
Into  that  I  will  not  enter  here.  Any  proper 
text-book  of  physiology  or  psychology  will  supply 
a  number  of  instances  of  the  habitual  deceptions 
of  sight  and  touch  and  hearing.  I  came  upon 
these  things  in  my  reading,  in  the  laboratory, 
with  microscope  or  telescope,  lived  with  them 
as  constant  difficulties.  I  will  only  instance  one 
trifling  case  of  visual  deception  in  order  to  lead 
to  my  next  question.  One  draws  two  lines 
strictly  parallel;  so 


*9 


20  First  and  Last  Things 

Oblique  to  them  one  draws  a  series  of  lines;  so 


and  instantly  the  parallelism  seems  to  be  dis- 
turbed. If  the  second  figure  is  presented  to  any- 
one without  sufficient  science  to  understand  this 
delusion,  the  impression  is  created  that  these  lines 
converge  to  the  right  and  diverge  to  the  left. 
The  vision  is  deceived  in  its  mental  factor  and 
judges  wrongly  of  the  thing  seen. 

In  this  case  we  are  able  to  measure  the  dis- 
tance of  the  lines,  to  find  how  the  main  lines 
looked  before  the  cross  ones  were  drawn,  to  bring 
the  deception  up  against  fact  of  a  different  sort 
and  so  correct  the  mistake.  If  the  ignorant 
observer  were  unable  to  do  that,  he  might  re- 
main permanently  under  the  impression  that  the 
main  lines  were  out  of  parallelism.  And  all  the 
infirmities  of  eye  and  ear,  touch  and  taste  are 
discovered  and  checked  by  the  fact  that  the 
erroneous  impressions  presently  strike  against 
fact  and  discover  an  incompatibility  with  it.  If 
they  did  not  we  should  never  have  discovered 
them.     If  on  the  other  hand  they  are  so  incom- 


Metaphysics  21 

patible  with  fact  as  to  endanger  the  lives  of  the 
beings  labouring  under  such  infirmities,  they 
would  tend  to  be  eliminated  from  the  species. 

The  presumption  to  which  biological  science 
brings  one  is  that  the  senses  and  mind  will 
work  as  well  as  the  survival  of  the  species  may 
require,  but  that  they  will  not  work  so  very  much 
better.  There  is  no  ground  in  matter-of-fact 
experience  for  assuming  that  there  is  any  more 
inevitable  certitude  about  purely  intellectual 
operations  than  there  is  about  sensory  percep- 
tions. The  mind  of  a  man  may  be  primarily 
only  a  food-seeking,  danger-avoiding,  mate-find- 
ing instrument,  just  as  the  mind  of  a  dog  is,  just 
as  the  nose  of  a  dog  is,  or  the  snout  of  a  pig. 

You  see  the  strong  preparatory  reasons  there 
are  for  entertaining  the  supposition  that; — 

The  senses  seem  surer  than  they  are. 

The  thinking  mind  seems  clearer  than  it  is 
and  is  more  positive  than  it  ought  to  be. 

The  world  of  fact  is  not  what  it  appears  to  be. 


Ss- 


The  Classificatory  Assumption. — After  I 
had  studied  science  and  particularly  biological 
science  for  some  years,  I  became  a  teacher  in  a 
school  for  boys.  I  found  it  necessary  to  sup- 
plement my  untutored  conception  of  teach- 
ing method  by  a  more  systematic  knowledge 
of  its  principles  and  methods  and  I  took 
the  courses  for  the  diplomas  of  Licentiate 
and  Fellow  of  the  London  College  of  Pre- 
ceptors which  happened  to  be  convenient  for 
me.  These  courses  included  some  of  the  more 
elementary  aspects  of  psychology  and  logic  and 
set  me  thinking  and  reading  further.  From 
the  first,  Logic  as  it  was  presented  to  me 
impressed  me  as  a  system  of  ideas  and 
methods  remote  and  secluded  from  the  world 
of  fact  in  which  I  lived  and  with  which  I 
had  to  deal.  As  it  came  to  me  in  the  ordin- 
ary text-books,  it  presented  itself  as  the 
science  of  inference  with  the  syllogism  as  its 
principal  instrument.  Now  I  was  first  struck 
by   the   fact  that  while   my  teachers   in   Logic 

22 


Metaphysics  23 

seemed  to  be  assuring  me  I  always  thought  in 
this   form ; — 

MisP 
S  isM 
S  isP 

the  method  of  my  reasoning  was  almost  always 
in  this  form; — 

S,  is  more  or  less  P. 

S2  is  very  similar  to  S,. 

Sa  is  very  probably  but  not  certainly  more  or  less  P. 

Let  us  go  on  that  assumption  and  see  how  it 
works. 

That  is  to  say  I  was  constantly  reasoning  by 
analogy  and  applying  verification.  So  far  from 
using  the  syllogistic  form  confidently,  I  habitually 
distrusted  it  as  anything  more  than  a  test  of 
consistency  in  statement.  But  I  found  the  text- 
books of  logic  disposed  to  ignore  my  customary 
method  of  reasoning  altogether  or  to  recognise 
it  only  where  Sx  and  S2  could  be  lumped  to- 
gether under  a  common  name.  Then  they  put  it 
something  after  this  form  as  Induction; — 

S„  S2,  S3,  and  S4  are  P. 

Sx  +  S,  +  S3  +  S4+     .     .     .    are  allS. 

All  S  is  P. 

I  looked  into  the  laws  of  thought  and  into  the 


24  First  and  Last  Things 

postulate  upon  which  the  syllogistic  logic  is  based, 
and  it  slowly  became  clear  to  me  that  from  my 
point  of  view,  the  point  of  view  of  one  who  seeks 
truth  and  reality,  logic  assumed  a  belief  in  the 
objective  reality  of  classification  of  which  my 
studies  in  biology  and  mineralogy  had  largely 
disabused  me.  Logic,  it  seemed  to  me,  had  taken 
a  common  innate  error  of  the  mind  and  had  em- 
phasised it  in  order  to  develop  a  system  of  reason- 
ing that  should  be  exact  in  its  processes.  I  turned 
my  attention  to  the  examination  of  that.  For 
in  common  with  the  general  run  of  men  I  had 
supposed  that  logic  professed  to  supply  a  trust- 
worthy science  and  method  for  the  investigation 
and  expression  of  reality. 

A  mind  nourished  on  anatomical  study  is  of 
course  permeated  with  the  suggestion  of  the 
vagueness  and  instability  of  biological  species. 
A  biological  species  is  quite  obviously  a  great 
number  of  unique  individuals  which  is  separable 
from  other  biological  species  only  by  the  fact 
that  an  enormous  number  of  other  linking  in- 
dividuals are  inaccessible  in  time — are  in  other 
words  dead  and  gone — and  each  new  individual 
in  that  species  does,  in  the  distinction  of  its  own 
individuality,  break  away  in  however  infinitesimal 
degree  from  the  previous  average  properties  of 


Metaphysics  25 

the  species.  There  is  no  property  of  any  species, 
even  the  properties  that  constitute  the  specific 
definition,  that  is  not  a  matter  of  more  or  less. 

If,  for  example,  a  species  be  distinguished  by 
a  single  large  red  spot  on  the  back,  you  will  find 
if  you  go  over  a  great  number  of  specimens  that 
red  spot  shrinking  here  to  nothing,  expanding 
there  to  a  more  general  redness,  weakening  to 
pink,  deepening  to  russet  and  brown,  shading 
into  crimson,  and  so  on  and  so  on.  And  this  is 
true  not  only  of  biological  species.  It  is  true  of 
the  mineral  specimens  constituting  a  mineral 
species,  and  I  remember  as  a  constant  refrain 
in  the  lectures  of  Professor  Judd  upon  rock  classi- 
fication, the  words,  "they  pass  into  one  another 
by  insensible  gradations."  It  is  true,  I  hold,  of 
all  things. 

You  will  think  perhaps  of  atoms  of  the  ele- 
ments as  instances  of  identically  similar  things, 
but  these  are  things  not  of  experience  but  of 
theory,  and  there  is  not  a  phenomenon  in  chem- 
istry that  is  not  equally  well  explained  on  the 
supposition  that  it  is  merely  the  immense  quan- 
tities of  atoms  necessarily  taken  in  any  experiment 
that  masks  by  the  operation  of  the  law  of  aver- 
ages the  fact  that  each  atom  also  has  its  unique 
quality,    its   special   individual   difference. 


26  First  and  Last  Things 

This  ideal  of  uniqueness  in  all  individuals  is 
not  only  true  of  the  classifications  of  material 
science;  it  is  true  and  still  more  evidently  true 
of  the  species  of  common  thought,  it  is  true  of 
common  terms.  Take  the  word  Chair.  When 
one  says  chair,  one  thinks  vaguely  of  an  average 
chair.  But  collect  individual  instances,  think  of 
arm-chairs  and  reading-chairs  and  dining-room 
chairs,  and  kitchen  chairs,  chairs  that  pass  into 
benches,  chairs  that  cross  the  boundary  and 
become  settees,  dentists'  chairs,  thrones,  opera 
stalls,  seats  of  all  sorts,  those  miraculous  fungoid 
growths  that  cumber  the  floor  of  the  Arts  and 
Crafts  Exhibition,  and  you  will  perceive  what 
a  lax  bundle  in  fact  is  this  simple  straightforward 
term.  In  co-operation  with  an  intelligent  joiner 
I  would  undertake  to  defeat  any  definition  of 
chair  or  chairishness  that  you  gave  me.  Chairs 
just  as  much  as  individual  organisms,  just  as 
much  as  mineral  and  rock  specimens,  are  unique 
things, — if  you  know  them  well  enough  you  will 
find  an  individual  difference  even  in  a  set  of 
machine-made  chairs — and  it  is  only  because  we 
do  not  possess  minds  of  unlimited  capacity, 
because  our  brain  has  only  a  limited  number  of 
pigeon-holes  for  our  correspondence  with  an  un- 
limited universe  of  objective  uniques,   that  we 


Metaphysics  27 

have  to  delude  ourselves  into  the  belief  that  there 
is  a  chairishness  in  this  species  common  to  and 
distinctive  of  all  chairs. 

Classification  and  number,  which  in  truth 
ignore  the  fine  differences  of  objective  realities, 
have  in  the  past  of  human  thought  been  imposed 
upon  things.     .     .     . 

Greek  thought  impresses  me  as  being  over- 
much obsessed  by  an  objective  treatment  of 
certain  necessary  preliminary  conditions  of  human 
thought — number  and  definition  and  class  and 
abstract  form!  But  these  things,  number,  defini- 
tion, class  and  abstract  form,  I  hold,  are  merely 
unavoidable  conditions  of  mental  activity  —  re- 
grettable conditions  rather  than  essential  facts. 
The  forceps  of  our  minds  are  clumsy  forceps  and 
crush  the  truth  a  little  in  taking  hold  of  it.     .     . 

Let  me  give  you  a  rough  figure  of  what  I  am 
trying  to  convey  in  this  first  attack  upon  the 
philosophical  validity  of  general  terms.  You 
have  seen  the  result  of  those  various  methods  of 
black  and  white  reproduction  that  involve  the 
use  of  a  rectangular  net.  You  know  the  sort 
of  process  picture  I  mean — it  used  to  be  em- 
ployed very  frequently  in  reproducing  photo- 
graphs. At  a  little  distance  you  really  seem  to 
have    a    faithful    reproduction    of    the    original 


28  First  and  Last  Things 

picture,  but  when  you  peer  closely  you  find  not 
the  unique  form  and  masses  of  the  original,  but 
a  multitude  of  little  rectangles,  uniform  in  shape 
and  size.  The  more  earnestly  you  go  into  the 
thing,  the  closelier  you  look,  the  more  the  picture 
is  lost  in  reticulations.  I  submit  the  world  of 
reasoned  enquiry  has  a  very  similar  relation  to 
the  world  of  fact.  For  the  rough  purposes  of 
everyday  the  net-work  picture  will  do,  but  the 
finer  your  purpose  the  less  it  will  serve,  and  for 
an  ideally  fine  purpose,  for  absolute  and  general 
knowledge  that  will  be  as  true  for  a  man  at  a 
distance  with  a  telescope  as  for  a  man  with  a 
microscope,  it  will  not  serve  at  all. 

It  is  true  you  can  make  your  net  of  logical 
interpretation  finer  and  finer,  you  can  fine  your 
classification  more  and  more — up  to  a  certain 
limit.  But  essentially  you  are  working  in  limits, 
and  as  you  come  closer,  as  you  look  at  finer  and 
subtler  things,  as  you  leave  the  practical  purpose 
for  which  the  method  exists,  the  element  of  error 
increases.  Every  species  is  vague,  every  term 
goes  cloudy  at  its  edges,  and  so  in  my  way  of 
thinking,  relentless  logic  is  only  another  name 
for  a  stupidity — for  a  sort  of  intellectual  pig- 
headedness.  If  you  push  a  philosophical  or 
metaphysical  enquiry  through  a  series  of    valid 


Metaphysics  29 

syllogisms — never  committing  any  generally  recog- 
nised fallacy — you  nevertheless  leave  behind  you  at 
each  step  a  certain  rubbing  and  marginal  loss  of 
objective  truth  and  you  get  deflections  that  are 
difficult  to  trace,  at  each  phase  in  the  process. 
Every  species  waggles  about  in  its  definition, 
every  tool  is  a  little  loose  in  its  handle,  every  scale 
has  its  individual  error.  So  long  as  you  are 
reasoning  for  practical  purposes  about  finite 
things  of  experience,  you  can  every  now  and  then 
check  your  process  and  correct  your  adjustments. 
But  not  when  you  make  what  are  called  philo- 
sophical and  theological  inquiries,  when  you  turn 
your  implement  towards  the  final  absolute  truth 
of  things. 

This  real  vagueness  of  class  terms  is  equally 
true  whether  we  consider  those  terms  used  ex- 
tensively or  intensively,  that  is  to  say  whether  in 
relation  to  all  the  members  of  the  species  or  in 
relation  to  an  imaginary  typical  specimen.  The 
logician  begins  by  declaring  that  S  is  either  P 
or  not  P.  In  the  world  of  fact  it  is  the  rarest 
thing  to  encounter  this  absolute  alternative;  Si 
is  pink,  but  S2  is  pinker,  S3  is  scarcely  pink  at  all, 
and  one  is  in  doubt  whether  S4  is  not  properly  to 
be  called  scarlet.  The  finest  type  specimen  you 
can  find  simply  has  the  characteristic  quality  a 


30  First  and  Last  Things 

little  more  rather  than  a  little  less.  The  neat 
little  circles  the  logician  uses  to  convey  his  idea 
of  P  or  not  P  to  the  student  are  just  pictures  of 
boundaries  in  his  mind,  exaggerations  of  a  natural 
mental  tendency.  They  are  required  for  the 
purposes  of  his  science,  but  they  are  departures 
from  the  nature  of  fact. 


§6. 


Empty  Terms. — Classes  in  logic  are  not  only 
represented  by  circles  with  a  hard  firm  outline, 
whereas  in  fact  they  have  no  such  definite  limits, 
but  also  there  is  a  constant  disposition  to  think 
of  all  names  as  if  they  represented  positive 
classes.  With  words  just  as  with  numbers  and 
abstract  forms  there  have  been  definite  phases 
of  human  development.  There  was  with  regard 
to  numbers  the  phase  when  man  could  barely 
count  at  all,  or  counted  in  perfect  good  faith  and 
sanity  upon  his  fingers.  Then  there  was  the 
phase  when  he  struggled  with  the  development 
of  number,  when  he  began  to  elaborate  all  sorts 
of  ideas  about  numbers,  until  at  last  he  developed 
complex  superstitions  about  perfect  numbers  and 
imperfect  numbers,  about  threes  and  sevens  and 
the  like.  The  same  was  the  case  with  abstract 
forms  and  even  to-day  we  are  scarcely  more 
than  heads  out  of  the  vast  subtle  muddle  of 
thinking  about  spheres  and  ideally  perfect  forms 
and  so  on,  that  was  the  price  of  this  little  neces- 
sary step  to  clear  thinking.     How  large  a  part 


32  First  and  Last  Things 

numerical  and  geometrical  magic,  numerical  and 
geometrical  philosophy  has  played  in  the  history 
of  the  mind!  And  the  whole  apparatus  of  lan- 
guage and  mental  communication  is  beset  with 
like  dangers.  The  language  of  the  savage  is  I 
suppose  purely  positive;  the  thing  has  a  name, 
the  name  has  a  thing.  This  indeed  is  the  tradi- 
tion of  language,  and  to-day  even,  we,  when  we 
hear  a  name  are  predisposed — and  sometimes  it 
is  a  very  vicious  disposition — to  imagine  forthwith 
something  answering  to  the  name.  We  are  disposed 
as  an  incurable  mental  vice,  to  accumulate  intension 
in  terms.  If  I  say  to  you  Wodget  or  Crump, 
you  find  yourself  passing  over  the  fact  that  these 
are  nothings,  these  are,  so  to  speak,  mere  blanket y 
blanks,  and  trying  to  think  what  sort  of  thing  a 
Wodget  or  a  Crump  may  be.  You  find  yourself 
led  insensibly  by  subtle  associations  of  sound  and 
ideas  to  giving  these  blank  terms  attributes. 

Now  this  is  true  not  only  of  quite  empty  terms 
but  of. terms  that  carry  a  meaning.  It  is  a  mental 
necessity  that  we  should  make  classes  and  use  gen- 
eral terms,  and  as  soon  as  we  do  that  we  fall  into 
immediate  danger  of  unjustifiably  increasing  the 
intension  of  these  terms.  You  will  find  a  large 
proportion  of  human  prejudice  and  misunderstand- 
ing arises  from  this  universal  proclivity. 


§7- 


Negative  Terms. — There  is  a  particular  sort 
of  empty  terms  that  has  been  and  is  conspicuously 
dangerous  to  the  thinker,  the  class  of  negative 
terms.  The  negative  term  is  in  plain  fact  just 
nothing;  "Not-A"  is  the  absence  of  any  trace  of 
the  quality  that  constitutes  A,  it  is  the  rest  of 
everything  for  ever.  But  there  seems  to  be  a 
real  bias  in  the  mind  towards  regarding  "Not-A" 
as  a  thing  mysteriously  in  the  nature  of  A,  as 
though  " Not-A"  and  A  were  species  of  the  same 
genus.  When  one  speaks  of  not-Pink  one  is  apt 
to  think  of  green  things  and  yellow  things  and 
to  ignore  anger  or  abstract  nouns  or  the  sound 
of  thunder.  And  logicians,  following  the  normal 
bias  of  the  mind  do  actually  present  A  and  Not-A 


in  this  sort  of  diagram  ignoring  altogether  the 
difficult  case  of  the  space  in  which  these  words 

3  33 


34  First  and  Last  Things 

are  printed.  Obviously  the  diagram  that  comes 
nearer  experienced  fact  is 

Not    ®     A 

with  no  outer  boundary.  But  the  logician  finds 
it  necessary  for  his  processes1  to  present  that 
outer  Not- A  as  bounded,  and  to  speak  of  the 
total  area  of  A  and  Not-A  as  the  Universe  of 
Discourse  and  the  metaphysician  and  the  common- 
sense  thinker  alike  fall  far  too  readily  into  the 
belief  that  this  convention  of  method  is  an  ade- 
quate representation  of  fact. 

Let  me  try  and  express  how  in  my  mind  this 
matter  of  negative  terms  has  shaped  itself.  I 
think  of  something  which  I  may  perhaps  best 
describe  as  being  off  the  stage  or  out  of  court,  or 
as  the  Void  without  Implications,  or  as  Nothing- 
ness, or  as  Outer  Darkness.  This  is  a  sort  of 
hypothetical  Beyond  to  the  visible  world  of 
human  thought,  and  thither  I  think  all  negative 
terms  reach  at  last,  and  merge  and  become 
nothing.  Whatever  positive  class  you  make, 
whatever  boundary  you  draw,  straight  away  from 
that  boundary  begins  the  corresponding  negative 

1  Vide  e.g.  Kayne's  Formal  Logic  re  Euler's  diagrams  and 
Immediate  Inferences. 


Metaphysics  35 

class  and  passes  into  the  illimitable  horizon  of 
nothingness.  You  talk  of  pink  things,  you  ig- 
nore, as  the  arbitrary  postulates  of  Logic  direct, 
the  more  elusive  shades  of  pink,  and  draw  your 
line.  Beyond  is  the  not-pink,  known  and  know- 
able,  and  still  in  the  not-pink  region  one  comes 
to  the  Outer  Darkness.  Not  blue,  not  happy, 
not  iron,  all  the  not  classes  meet  in  that  Outer 
Darkness.  That  same  Outer  Darkness  and  no- 
thingness is  infinite  space  and  infinite  time  and 
any  being  of  infinite  qualities,  and  all  that  region 
I  rule  out  of  court  in  my  philosophy  altogether. 
I  will  neither  affirm  nor  deny  if  I  can  help  it  about 
any  not  things,  I  will  not  deal  with  not  things  at 
all,  except  by  accident  and  inadvertence.  If  I 
use  the  word  "infinite"  I  use  it  as  one  often  uses 
"countless,"  "the  countless  hosts  of  the  enemy" 
— or  "Immeasurable" — "immeasurable  cliffs" — 
that  is  to  say  as  the  limit  of  measurement,  as  a 
convenient  equivalent  to  as  many  times  this 
cloth  yard  as  you  can,  and  as  many  again  and 
so  on  and  so  on. 

Now  a  great  number  of  apparently  positive 
terms  are,  or  have  become,  practically  negative 
terms  and  are  under  the  same  ban  with  me.  A 
considerable  number  of  terms  that  have  played 
a  great  part  in  the  world  of  thought,  seem  to  me 


36  First  and  Last  Things 

to  be  invalidated  by  this  same  defect,  to  have  no 
content  or  an  undefined  content  or  an  unjusti- 
fiable content.  For  example,  that  word  Omni- 
scient, as  implying  infinite  knowledge,  impresses 
me  as  being  a  word  with  a  delusive  air  of  being 
solid  and  full,  when  it  is  really  hollow  with  no 
content  whatever.  I  am  persuaded  that  knowing 
is  the  relation  of  a  conscious  being  to  something 
not  itself,  that  the  thing  known  is  defined  as  a 
system  of  parts  and  aspects  and  relationships, 
that  knowledge  is  comprehension,  and  so  that 
only  finite  things  can  know  or  be  known.  When 
you  talk  of  a  being  of  infinite  extension  and 
infinite  duration,  omniscient  and  omnipotent  and 
Perfect,  you  seem  to  me  to  be  talking  in  nega- 
tives of  nothing  whatever. 


§8. 


Logic  Static  and  Life  Kinetic. — There  is 
another  infirmity  of  the  mind  to  which  atten- 
tion has  been  called  recently  by  an  able 
paper  read  to  the  Cambridge  Moral  Science 
Club  by  my  friend  Miss  Amber  Reeves.  In 
this  she  has  developed  a  suggestion  of  Mr. 
F.  C.  S.  Schiller's.  The  current  syllogistic 
logic  rests  on  the  assumption  that  either  A 
is  B  or  it  is  not  B.  The  practical  reality, 
she  contends,  is  that  nothing  is  permanent; 
A  is  always  becoming  B  more  or  less  or  ceas- 
ing to  be  B  more  or  less.  But  it  would  seem 
the  human  mind  cannot  manage  with  that. 
It  has  to  hold  a  thing  still  for  a  moment  be- 
fore it  can  think  it.  It  arrests  the  present 
moment  for  its  struggle  as  Joshua  stopped 
the  sun.  It  cannot  contemplate  things  con- 
tinuously and  so  it  has  to  resort  as  it  were 
to  a  series  of  static  snapshots.  It  has  to  kill 
motion  in  order  to  study  it  as  a  naturalist 
kills  and  pins  out  a  butterfly  in  order  to 
study    life. 

37 


38  First  and  Last  Things 

You  see  the  mind  is  really  pigeon-holed  and 
discontinuous  in  two  respects;  in  respect  to  time 
and  in  respect  to  classification,  where  one  has 
a  strong  persuasion  that  the  world  of  fact  is 
unbounded  or  continuous. 


§9- 


Planes  and  Dialects  of  Thought. — Finally 
the  Logician,  intent  upon  perfecting  the  certitudes 
of  his  methods  rather  than  upon  expressing  the 
confusing  subtleties  of  truth,  has  done  little  to 
help  thinking  men  in  the  perpetual  difficulty  that 
arises  from  the  fact  that  the  universe  can  be  seen 
in  many  different  fashions  and  expressed  by  many 
different  systems  of  terms,  each  expression  in  its 
limits  true  and  yet  incommensurable  with  expres- 
sion upon  a  differing  system.  There  is  a  sort  of 
stratification  in  human  ideas.  I  have  it  very 
much  in  mind  that  various  terms  in  our  reasoning 
lie,  as  it  were,  at  different  levels  and  in  different 
planes,  and  that  we  accomplish  a  large  amount 
of  error  and  confusion  by  reasoning  terms  together 
that  do  not  lie  or  nearly  lie  in  the  same  plane. 

Let  me  endeavour  to  make  myself  a  little  less 
obscure  by  a  flagrant  instance  from  physical 
things.  Suppose  someone  began  to  talk  seriously 
of  a  man  seeing  an  atom  through  a  microscope, 
or  better  perhaps  of  cutting  one  in  half  with  a 
knife.     There    are    a    number    of    non-analytical 

39 


40  First  and  Last  Things 

people  who  would  be  quite  prepared  to  believe 
that  an  atom  could  be  visible  to  the  eye  or  cut 
in  this  manner.  But  anyone  at  all  conversant 
with  physical  conceptions  would  almost  as  soon 
think  of  killing  the  square  root  of  2  with  a  rook 
rifle  as  of  cutting  an  atom  in  half  with  a  knife. 
One's  conception  of  an  atom  is  reached  through 
a  process  of  hypothesis  and  analysis,  and  in  the 
world  of  atoms  there  are  no  knives  and  no  men 
to  cut.  If  you  have  thought  with  a  strong  con- 
sistent mental  movement,  then  when  you  have 
thought  of  your  atom  under  the  knife  blade,  your 
knife  blade  has  itself  become  a  cloud  of  swinging 
grouped  atoms,  and  your  microscope  lens  a  little 
universe  of  oscillatory  and  vibratory  molecules. 
If  you  think  of  the  universe,  thinking  at  the  level 
of  atoms,  there  is  neither  knife  to  cut,  scale  to 
weigh,  nor  eye  to  see.  The  universe  at  that  plane 
to  which  the  mind  of  the  molecular  physicist  descends 
has  none  of  the  shapes  or  forms  of  our  common 
life  whatever.  This  hand  with  which  I  write 
is  in  the  universe  of  molecular  physics  a  cloud  of 
warring  atoms  and  molecules,  combining  and 
recombining,  colliding,  rotating,  flying  hither  and 
thither  in  the  universal  atmosphere  of  ether. 

You  see,  I  hope,  what  I  mean  when  I  say  that 
the  universe  of  molecular  physics  is  at  a  different 


Metaphysics  41 

level  from  the  universe  of  common  experience; 
— what  we  call  stable  and  solid  is  in  that  world 
a  freely  moving  system  of  interlacing  centres  of 
force,  what  we  call  colour  and  sound  is  there  no 
more  than  this  length  of  vibration  or  that.  We 
have  reached  to  a  conception  of  that  universe  of 
molecular  physics  by  a  great  enterprise  of  organ- 
ised analysis,  and  our  universe  of  daily  experi- 
ences stands  in  relation  to  that  elemental  world 
as  if  it  were  a  synthesis  of  those  elemental  things. 

I  would  suggest  to  you  that  this  is  only  a  very 
extreme  instance  of  the  general  state  of  affairs, 
that  there  may  be  finer  and  subtler  differences  of 
level  between  one  term  and  another,  and  that 
terms  may  very  well  be  thought  of  as  lying 
obliquely  and  as  being  twisted  through  different 
levels. 

It  will  perhaps  give  a  clearer  idea  of  what  I 
am  seeking  to  convey  if  I  suggest  a  concrete 
image  for  the  whole  world  of  a  man's  thought  and 
knowledge.  Imagine  a  large  clear  jelly,  in  which 
at  all  angles  and  in  all  states  of  simplicity  or 
contortion  his  ideas  are  imbedded.  They  are  all 
valid  and  possible  ideas  as  they  lie,  none  incom- 
patible with  any.  If  you  imagine  the  direction 
of  up  or  down  in  this  clear  jelly  being  as  it  were 
the  direction  in  which  one  moves  by  analysis  or 


42  First  and  Last  Things 

by  synthesis,  if  you  go  down  for  example  from 
matter  to  atoms  and  centres  of  force  and  up  to 
men  and  states  and  countries — if  you  will  imagine 
the  ideas  lying  in  that  manner — you  will  get  the 
beginnings  of  my  intention.  But  our  Instrument, 
our  process  of  thinking,  like  a  drawing  before 
the  discovery  of  perspective,  appears  to  have  diffi- 
culties with  the  third  dimension,  appears  capable 
only  of  dealing  with  or  reasoning  about  ideas  by 
projecting  them  upon  the  same  plane.  It  will 
be  obvious  that  a  great  multitude  of  things  may 
very  well  exist  together  in  a  solid  jelly,  which 
would  be  overlapping  and  incompatible  and 
mutually  destructive,  when  projected  together 
upon  one  plane.  Through  the  bias  in  our  Instru- 
ment to  do  this,  through  reasoning  between  terms 
not  in  the  same  plane,  an  enormous  amount  of 
confusion,  perplexity  and  mental  deadlocking 
occurs. 

The  old  theological  deadlock  between  pre- 
destination and  free-will  serves  admirably  as  an 
example  of  the  sort  of  deadlock  I  mean.  Take 
life  at  the  level  of  common  sensation  and  common 
experience  and  there  is  no  more  indisputable  fact 
than  man's  freedom  of  will,  unless  it  is  his  complete 
moral  responsibility.  But  make  only  the  least 
penetrating  of  scientific  analyses  and  you  perceive 


Metaphysics  43 

a  world  of  inevitable  consequences,  a  rigid  suc- 
cession of  cause  and  effect.  Insist  upon  a  flat 
agreement  between  the  two,  and  there  you  are! 
The  Instrument  fails. 

So  far  as  this  particular  opposition  is  concerned, 
I  shall  point  out  later  the  reasonableness  and  con- 
venience of  regarding  the  common-sense  belief  in 
free-will  as  truer  for  one's  personal  life  than 
determinism. 


§  io. 

Practical  Conclusions  from  these  Con- 
siderations.— Now  what  is  the  practical  out- 
come of  all  these  criticisms  of  the  human  mind? 
Does  it  follow  that  thought  is  futile  and  discussion 
vain?  By  no  means.  Rather  these  considera- 
tions lead  us  toward  mutual  understanding. 
They  clear  up  the  deadlocks  that  come  from  the 
hard  and  fast  use  of  terms,  they  establish  mutual 
charity  as  an  intellectual  necessity.  The  common 
way  of  speech  and  thought  which  the  old  system 
of  logic  has  simply  systematised,  is  too  glib  and 
too  presumptuous  of  certainty.  We  must  needs 
use  language,  but  we  must  use  it  always  with  the 
thought  of  its  unreal  exactness,  its  actual  habitual 
deflection  from  fact  in  our  minds.  All  proposi- 
tions are  approximations  to  an  elusive  truth,  and 
we  employ  them  as  the  mathematician  studies 
the  circle  by  supposing  it  to  be  a  polygon  of  a 
very  great  number  of  sides. 

We  must  make  use  of  terms  and  sometimes  of 
provisional  terms.  But  we  must  guard  against 
such  terms  and  the  mental  danger  of  excessive 

44 


Metaphysics  45 

intension  they  carry  with  them.  The  child  takes 
a  stick  and  says  it  is  a  sword  and  does  not  forget, 
he  takes  a  shadow  under  the  bed  and  says  it  is 
a  bear  and  he  half  forgets.  The  man  takes  a  set 
of  emotions  and  says  it  is  a  God,  and  he  gets 
excited  and  propagandist  and  does  forget,  he  is 
involved  in  disputes  and  confusions  with  the  old 
gods  of  wood  and  stone,  and  presently  he  is 
making  his  God  a  Great  White  Throne  and  fitting 
him  up  with  a  mystical  family. 

Essentially  we  have  to  train  our  minds  to  think 
anew,  if  we  are  to  think  beyond  the  purposes  for 
which  the  mind  seems  to  have  been  evolved.  We 
have  to  disabuse  ourselves  from  the  superstition 
of  the  binding  nature  of  definitions  and  the 
exactness  of  logic.  We  have  to  cure  ourselves 
of  the  natural  tricks  of  common  thought  and 
argument.  You  know  the  way  of  it,  how  effec- 
tive and  foolish  it  is;  the  quotation  of  the 
exact  statement  of  which  every  jot  and  tittle 
must  be  maintained,  the  challenge  to  be 
consistent,  the  deadlock  between  your  terms 
and  mine. 

More  and  more  as  I  grow  older  and  more  settled 
in  my  views-  am  I  bored  by  common  argument, 
bored  not  because  I  am  ceasing  to  be  interested 
in  the  things  argued  about,  but  because  I  see 


46  First  and  Last  Things 

more  and  more  clearly  the  futility  of  the  methods 
pursued. 

How  then  are  we  to  think  and  argue  and  what 
truth  may  we  attain?  Is  not  the  method  of  the 
scientific  investigator  a  valid  one  and  is  there  not 
truth  to  the  world  of  fact  in  scientific  laws?  De- 
cidedly there  is.  And  the  continual  revision 
and  testing  against  fact  that  these  laws  get  is 
constantly  approximating  them  more  and  more 
nearly  to  a  trustworthy  statement  of  fact.  Never- 
theless they  are  never  true  in  that  dogmatic 
degree  in  which  they  seem  true  to  the  unphilo- 
sophical  student  of  science.  Accepting  as  I  do 
the  validity  of  nearly  all  the  general  propositions 
of  modern  Science,  I  have  constantly  to  bear  in 
mind  that  about  them  too  clings  the  error  of 
excessive  claims  to  precision. 

The  man  trained  solely  in  science  falls  easily 
into  a  superstitious  attitude;  he  is  overdone  with 
classification.  He  believes  in  the  possibility  of 
exact  knowledge  everywhere.  What  is  not  exact 
he  declares  is  not  knowledge.  He  believes  in 
specialists  and  experts  in  all  fields. 

I  dispute  this  universal  range  of  possible  scien- 
tific precision.  There  is  a  certain  not  too  clearly 
recognised  order  in  the  sciences  which  forms  the 
gist  of  my  case  against  this  scientific  pretension. 


Metaphysics  47 

There  is  a  gradation  in  the  importance  of  the 
individual  instance  as  one  passes  from  mechanics 
and  physics  and  chemistry  through  the  biological 
sciences  and  economics  and  sociology,  a  grada- 
tion whose  correlations  and  implications  have  not 
yet  received  adequate  recognition,  and  which 
do  profoundly  affect  the  method  of  study  and 
research  in  each  science. 

Let  me  repeat  in  slightly  altered  terms  some 
of  the  points  raised  in  the  preceding  sections.  I 
have  doubted  and  denied  that  there  are  identi- 
cally similar  objective  experiences;  I  consider  all 
objective  beings  as  individual  and  unique.  It 
is  now  understood  that  conceivably  only  in  the 
subjective  world,  and  in  theory  and  the  imagina- 
tion, do  we  deal  with  identically  similar  units, 
and  with  absolutely  commensurable  quantities. 
In  the  real  world  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  we 
deal  at  most  with  practically  similar  units  and 
practically  commensurable  quantities.  But  there 
is  a  strong  bias,  a  sort  of  labour-saving  bias  in 
the  normal  human  mind  to  ignore  this  and  not 
only  to  speak  but  to  think  of  a  thousand  bricks 
or  a  thousand  sheep  or  a  thousand  sociologists  as 
though  they  were  all  absolutely  true  to  sample. 
If  it  is  brought  before  a  thinker  for  a  moment  that 
in  any  special  case  this  is  not  so,  he  slips  back  to 


48  First  and  Last  Things 

the  old  attitude  as  soon  as  his  attention  is  with- 
drawn. This  type  of  error  has,  for  instance, 
caught  many  of  the  race  of  chemists  and  atoms 
and  ions  and  so  forth  of  the  same  species  are 
tacitly  assumed  to  be  similar  to  one  another.  Be 
it  noted  that  so  far  as  the  practical  results  of 
chemistry  and  physics  go,  it  scarcely  matters 
which  assumption  we  adopt,  the  number  of  units 
is  so  great,  the  individual  difference  so  drowned 
and  lost.  For  purposes  of  enquiry  and  discussion 
the  incorrect  one  is  infinitely  more  convenient. 

But  this  ceases  to  be  true  directly  we  emerge 
from  the  region  of  chemistry  and  physics.  In  the 
biological  sciences  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
common-sense  struggled  hard  to  ignore  individ- 
uality in  shells  and  plants  and  animals.  There 
was  an  attempt  to  eliminate  the  more  conspicuous 
departures  as  abnormalities,  as  sports,  nature's 
weak  moments,  and  it  was  only  with  the  estab- 
lishment of  Darwin's  great  generalisations  that 
the  hard  and  fast  classificatory  system  broke 
down  and  individuality  came  to  its  own.  Yet 
there  had  always  been  a  clearly  felt  difference 
between  the  conclusions  of  the  biological  sciences 
and  those  dealing  with  lifeless  substance  in  the 
relative  vagueness,  the  insubordinate  looseness 
and  inaccuracy  of  the   former.     The   naturalist 


Metaphysics  49 

accumulated  facts  and  multiplied  names,  but  he 
did  not  go  triumphantly  from  generalisation 
to  generalisation  after  the  fashion  of  the  chemist 
or  physicist.  It  is  easy  to  see  therefore  how  it 
came  about  that  the  inorganic  sciences  were  re- 
garded as  the  true  scientific  bed-rock.  It  was 
scarcely  suspected  that  the  biological  sciences 
might  perhaps  after  all  be  truer  than  the  experi- 
mental, in  spite  of  the  difference  in  practical  value 
in  favour  of  the  latter.  It  was,  and  is  by  the 
great  majority  of  people  to  this  day,  supposed  to 
be  the  latter  that  are  invincibly  true ;  and  the  for- 
mer are  regarded  as  a  more  complex  set  of  prob- 
lems merely,  with  obliquities  and  refractions  that 
presently  will  be  explained  away.  Comte  and 
Herbert  Spencer  certainly  seem  to  me  to  have 
taken  that  much  for  granted.  Herbert  Spencer 
no  doubt  talked  of  the  unknown  and  unknowable, 
but  not  in  this  sense  as  an  element  of  inexactness 
running  through  all  things.  He  thought,  it  seems 
to  me,  of  the  unknown  as  the  indefinable  be- 
yond to  an  immediate  world  that  might  be  quite 
clearly  and  definitely  known. 

There  is  a  growing  body  of  people  which  is  be- 
ginning to  hold  the  converse  view — that  counting, 
classification,  measurement,  the  whole  fabric  of 
mathematics,    is   subjective   and   untrue   to   the 


So  First  and  Last  Things 

world  of  fact,  and  that  the  uniqueness  of  individu- 
als is  the  objective  truth.  As  the  number  of  units 
taken  diminishes,  the  amount  of  variety  and 
inexactness  of  generalisation  increases,  because 
individuality  tells  more  and  more.  Could  you 
take  men  by  the  thousand  billion,  you  could 
generalise  about  them  as  you  do  about  atoms, 
could  you  take  atoms  singly,  it  may  be  you  would 
find  them  as  individual  as  your  aunts  and  cousins. 
That  concisely  is  the  minority  belief,  and  my 
belief. 

Now  what  is  called  the  scientific  method  in 
the  physical  sciences  rests  upon  the  ignoring  of 
individualities;  and  like  many  mathematical  con- 
ventions, its  great  practical  convenience  is  no 
proof  whatever  of  its  final  truth.  Let  me  admit 
the  enormous  value,  the  wonder  of  its  results  in 
mechanics,  and  all  the  physical  sciences,  in  chem- 
istry, even  in  physiology, — but  what  is  its  value 
beyond  that  ?  Is  this  ' '  scientific  method ' '  of  value 
in  biology?  The  great  advances  made  by  Darwin 
and  his  school  in  biology  were  not  made,  it  must 
be  remembered,  by  the  scientific  method,  as  it  is 
generally  conceived,  at  all.  His  was  historical 
research.  He  conducted  a  research  into  pre- 
documentary  history.  He  collected  infcrmation 
along  the  lines  indicated  by  certain  interrogations, 


Metaphysics  51 

and  the  bulk  of  his  work  was  the  digesting  and 
critical  analysis  of  that.  For  documents  and 
monuments  he  had  fossils  and  anatomical  struc- 
tures and  germinating  eggs  too  innocent  to  lie. 
But  on  the  other  hand  he  had  to  correspond  with 
breeders  and  travellers  of  various  sorts,  classes 
entirely  analogous,  from  the  point  of  view  of  evi- 
dence, to  the  writers  of  history  and  memoirs.  I 
question  profoundly  whether  the  word  "science," 
in  current  usage  anyhow,  ever  means  such  patient 
disentanglement  as  Darwin  pursued.  It  means  the 
attainment  of  something  positive  and  emphatic 
in  the  way  of  a  conclusion,  based  on  amply  re- 
peated experiments  capable  of  infinite  repetition, 
"proved"  as  they  say,  "up  to  the  hilt." 

It  would  be  of  course  possible  to  dispute 
whether  the  word  "science"  should  convey  this 
quality  of  certitude,  but  to  most  people  it  certainly 
does  at  the  present  time.  So  far  as  the  move- 
ments of  comets  and  electric  trams  go,  there  is 
no  doubt  practically  cock-sure  science ;  and  Comte 
and  Herbert  Spencer  seem  to  me  to  have  believed 
that  cock-sure  could  be  extended  to  every  con- 
eeivable  finite  thing.  The  fact  that  Herbert 
Spencer  called  a  certain  doctrine  Individualism 
reflects  nothing  on  the  non-individualising  quality 
of  his  primary  assumptions   and  of  his  mental 


52  First  and  Last  Things 

texture.  He  believed  that  individuality  (hetero- 
geneity) was  and  is  an  evolutionary  product  from 
an  original  homogeneity,  begotten  by  folding 
and  multiplying  and  dividing  and  twisting  it,  and 
still  fundamentally  it.  It  seems  to  me  that  the 
general  usage  is  entirely  for  the  limitation  of  the 
word  "science"  to  knowledge  and  the  search 
after  knowledge  of  a  high  degree  of  precision. 
And  not  simply  the  general  usage;  "Science  is 
measurement,"  Science  is  "organised  common- 
sense,"  proud  in  fact  of  its  essential  error,  scorn- 
ful of  any  metaphysical  analysis  of  its  terms. 

Now  my  contention  is  that  we  can  arrange 
the  fields  of  human  thought  and  interest  about 
the  world  of  fact  in  a  sort  of  scale.  At  one 
end  the  number  of  units  is  infinite  and  the  methods 
exact,  at  the  other  we  have  the  human  subjects  in 
which  there  is  no  exactitude.  Sociology  stands  at 
the  extreme  end  of  the  scale  from  the  molecular 
sciences.  In  these  latter  there  is  an  infinitude  of 
units;  in  sociology,  as  Comte  perceived,  there  is 
only  one  unit.  It  is  true  that  Herbert  Spencer, 
in  order  to  get  classification  somehow,  did,  as 
Professor  Durkheim  has  pointed  out,  separate 
human  society  into  societies  and  made  believe 
they  competed  one  with  another  and  died  and 
reproduced  just  like  animals,  and  that  economists 


Metaphysics  53 

following  List  have  for  the  purposes  of  fiscal  con- 
troversy discovered  economic  types;  but  this  is 
a  transparent  device,  and  one  is  surprised  to 
find  thoughtful  and  reputable  writers  off  their 
guard  against  such  bad  analogy.  But  indeed  it 
is  impossible  to  isolate  complete  communities  of 
men,  or  to  trace  any  but  rude  general  resemblances 
between  group  and  group.  These  alleged  units 
have  as  much  individuality  as  pieces  of  cloud; 
they  come,  they  go,  they  fuse  and  separate. 
And  we  are  forced  to  conclude  that  not  only  is 
the  method  of  observation,  experiment  and  veri- 
fication left  far  away  down  the  scale,  but  that 
the  method  of  classification  under  types,  which 
has  served  so  useful  a  purpose  in  the  middle  group 
of  subjects,  the  subjects  involving  numerous 
but  a  finite  number  of  units,  has  also  to  be  aban- 
doned here.  We  cannot  put  Humanity  into  a 
museum  or  dry  it  for  examination;  our  one  single 
still  living  specimen  is  all  history,  all  anthropo- 
logy, and  the  fluctuating  world  of  men.  There  is  no 
satisfactory  means  of  dividing  it  and  nothing  else 
in  the  real  world  with  which  to  compare  it.  We 
have  only  the  remotest  ideas  of  its  "life-cycle" 
and  a  few  relics  of  its  origin  and  dreams  of  its 
destiny. 

This  denial  of  scientific  precision  is  as  true  of 


54  First  and  Last  Things 

all  the  subjects  of  general  human  relations  and 
attitude,  as  it  is  of  sociology.  And  in  regard  to 
all  these  matters  affecting  our  personal  motives, 
our  self-control  and  our  devotions,  it  is  much 
truer. 

From  this  it  is  an  easy  step  to  the  statement 
that  so  far  as  the  clear-cut  confident  sort  of 
knowledge  goes,  the  sort  of  knowledge  one  gets 
from  a  time-table  or  a  text-book  of  chemistry, 
or  seeks  from  a  witness  in  a  police  court,  I  am, 
in  relation  to  religious  and  moral  questions,  an 
agnostic.  I  do  not  think  any  general  propositions 
partaking  largely  of  the  nature  of  fact  can  be 
known  about  these  things.  There  is  nothing 
possessing  the  general  validity  of  fact  to  be 
stated  or  known. 


§  II. 

Beliefs. — Yet  it  is  of  urgent  practical  neces- 
sity that  we  should  have  such  propositions  and 
beliefs.  All  those  we  conjure  out  of  our  mental 
apparatus  and  the  world  of  fact  dissolve  and 
disappear  again  under  scrutiny.  It  is  clear  we 
must  resort  to  some  other  method  for  these 
necessities. 

Now  I  make  my  beliefs  as  I  want  them.  I  do 
not  attempt  to  go  to  fact  for  them.  I  make 
them  thus  and  not  thus  exactly  as  an  artist  makes 
a  picture  so  and  not  so.  I  believe  that  is  how 
we  all  make  our  beliefs,  but  that  many  people  do 
not  see  this  clearly  and  confuse  their  beliefs  with 
perceived  fact. 

I  draw  my  beliefs  exactly  as  an  artist  draws 
lines  to  make  a  picture,  to  express  my  impression 
of  the  world  and  my  purpose. 

The  artist  cannot  defend  his  expression  as 
a  scientific  man  defends  his,  and  upon  any 
given  assumptions  demonstrate  that  they  are 
true.  Any  loud  fool  may  stand  in  the  front  of  a 
picture    and    call    it    inaccurate,    untrustworthy, 

55 


56  First  and  Last  Things 

unbeautiful.  That  last,  the  most  vital  issue  of 
all,  is  the  one  least  assured.  Loud  fools  always 
will  do  that  sort  of  thing.  You  take  quite  ig- 
norant people  before  almost  any  beautiful  work 
of  art  and  they  will  laugh  at  it  as  absurd.  If  one 
sits  on  a  popular  evening  in  that  long  room  at 
South  Kensington  which  contains  Raphael's  car- 
toons, one  remarks  that  perhaps  a  third  of  those 
who  stray  through  and  look  at  all  those  fine  efforts, 
titter.  If  one  searches  in  the  magazines  of  a  little 
while  ago,  one  finds  in  the  angry  and  resentful 
reception  of  the  Pre-Raphaelites  another  instance 
of  the  absolutely  indefensible  nature  of  many  of 
the  most  beautiful  propositions.  And  as  a  still 
more  striking  and  remarkable  case,  take  the  on- 
slaught made  by  Ruskin  upon  the  works  of 
Whistler.  You  will  remember  that  a  libel  action 
ensued  and  that  these  pictures  were  gravely 
reasoned  about  by  barristers  and  surveyed  by 
jurymen  to  assess  their  merits.     .     .     . 

In  the  end  it  is  the  indefensible  truth  that  lasts  \ 
it  lasts  because  it  works  and  serves.  People  come 
to  it  and  remain  and  attract  other  understanding 
and  enquiring  people. 

Now  when  I  say  I  make  my  beliefs  and  that  I 
cannot  prove  them  to  you  and  convince  you  of 
them,   that  does  not  mean  that  I   make  them 


Metaphysics  57 

wantonly  and  regardless  of  fact,  that  I  throw 
them  off  as  a  child  scribbles  on  a  slate.  Mr. 
Ruskin,  if  I  remember  rightly,  accused  Whistler 
of  throwing  a  pot  of  paint  in  the  face  of  the  public, 
that  was  the  essence  of  his  libel.  The  artistic 
method  in  this  field  of  beliefs,  as  in  the  field  of 
visual  renderings,  is  one  of  great  freedom  and 
initiative  and  great  poverty  of  test,  that  is  all, 
but  of  no  wantonness ;  the  conditions  of  Tightness 
are  none  the  less  imperative  because  they  are 
mysterious  and  indefinable.  I  adopt  certain 
beliefs  because  I  feel  the  need  for  them,  because 
I  feel  an  often  quite  unanalysable  Tightness  in 
them;  because  the  alternative  of  a  chaotic  life 
distresses  me,  because  they  are  right.  My  belief 
in  them  rests  upon  the  fact  that  they  work  for 
me  and  satisfy  a  desire  for  harmony  and  beauty. 
They  are  arbitrary  assumptions  if  you  will,  that 
I  see  fit  to  impose  upon  my  universe.  But 
though  they  are  arbitrary,  they  are  not 
necessarily  individual.  Just  so  far  as  we  all 
have  a  common  likeness,  just  so  far  can  we 
be  brought  under  the  same  imperatives  to 
think  and  believe. 

And  though  they  are  arbitrary,  each  day  they 
stand  wear  and  tear  and  each  new  person  they 
satisfy,  is  another  day  and  another  voice  towards 


58  First  and  Last  Things 

showing  they  do  correspond  to  something  that  is 
so  far  fact  and  real. 

This  is  Pragmatism  as  I  conceive  it,  the  aban- 
donment of  infinite  assumptions,  the  extension  of 
the  experimental  spirit  to  all  human  interests. 


§   12. 

Summary. — In  concluding  this  First  Book  let 
me  give  a  summary  of  the  principal  points  of 
what  has  gone   before. 

I  figure  the  mind  of  man  as  an  imperfect  being 
obtaining  knowledge  by  imperfect  eyesight,  im- 
perfect hearing  and  so  forth,  who  must  needs  walk 
manfully  and  patiently,  exercising  will  and  mak- 
ing choices  and  determining  things  between  the 
mysteries  of  external  and  internal  fact. 

Essentially  man's  mind  moves  within  limits 
depending  upon  his  individual  character  and 
experience.  These  limits  constitute  his  circle  of 
thought,  and  they  differ  for  everyone. 

That  briefly  is  what  I  consider  to  be  the  case 
with  my  own  mind,  and  I  believe  it  is  the  case 
with  yours. 

Most  minds,  it  seems  to  me,  are  similar,  but 
none  are  absolutely  alike  in  character  or  in 
contents. 

We  are  all  biassed  to  ignore  our  mental  im- 
perfections and  to  talk  and  act  as  though  in 
our  minds  we  had  exact  instruments,  something 

59 


60  First  and  Last  Things 

wherewith  to  scale  the  heavens  with  assurance, 
and  to  believe  as  if,  except  for  perversity,  all  our 
minds  work  exactly  alike. 

Man,  thinking  man,  suffers  from  intellectual 
over-confidence  and  a  vain  belief  in  the  universal 
validity  of  reasoning. 

We  all  need  training,  training  in  the  balanced 
attitude. 

Of  everything  we  need  to  say  this  is  true,  but  it 
is  not  quite  true. 

Of  everything  we  need  to  say,  this  is  true  in 
relation  to  things  in  or  near  its  plane  but  not 
true  of  other  things. 

Of  everything  we  have  to  remember,  this  may 
be  truer  for  us  than  for  other  people. 

In  disputation  particttlarly  we  have  to  re- 
member this  and  most  with  our  antagonist, 
that  the  spirit  of  an  utterance  may  be  better 
than  the  phrase. 

We  have  to  discourage  the  cheap  tricks  of 
controversy,  the  retort,  the  search  for  incon- 
sistency. 

We  have  to  realise  that  these  things  are  as 
foolish  and  ill-bred  and  anti-social  as  shouting 
in  conversation  or  making  puns,  and  we  have 
to  work  out  habits  of  thought  purged  from 
the  sin   of   assurance.     We  have  to  do  this  for 


Metaphysics  61 

our  own  good  quite  as  much  as  for  the  sake  of 
intercourse. 

All  the  great  and  important  beliefs  by  which 
life  is  guided  and  determined  are  less  of  the  nature 
of  fact  than  of  artistic  expression. 


Book    the    Second. 
Of  Belief. 


63 


§1. 


My  Primary  Act  of  Faith. — And  now  having 
stated  my  conception  of  the  true  relationship 
of  our  thoughts  and  words  to  facts,  having 
distinguished  between  the  more  accurate  and 
frequently  verified  propositions  of  science  and 
the  more  arbitrary  and  infrequently  verified 
propositions  of  belief  and  made  clear  the  spon- 
taneous and  artistic  quality  that  inheres  in  all 
our  moral  and  religious  generalisations,  I  may 
hope  to  go  on  to  my  confession  of  faith  with 
less  misunderstanding. 

Now  my  most  comprehensive  belief  about  the 
external  and  the  internal  and  myself  is  that  they 
make  one  universe  in  which  I  and  every  part  are 
ultimately  important.  That  is  quite  an  arbi- 
trary act  of  my  mind.  It  is  quite  possible  to 
maintain  that  everything  is  a  chaotic  assembly, 
that  any  part  might  be  destroyed  without  affecting 
any  other  part.  I  do  not  choose  to  argue  against 
that.  If  you  choose  to  say  that,  I  am  no  more 
disposed  to  argue  with  you  than  if  you  choose  to 

wear  a  mitre  in  Fleet  Street  or  drink  a  bottle  of 

65 


66  First  and  Last  Things 

ink,  or  declare  the  figure  of  Ally  Sloper  more  dig- 
nified and  beautiful  than  the  head  of  Jove.  There 
is  no  Q.E.D.  that  you  cannot  do  so.  You  can. 
You  will  not  like  to  go  on  with  it,  I  think, 
and  it  will  not  answer,  but  that  is  a  different 
matter. 

I  dismiss  the  idea  that  life  is  chaotic  because 
it  leaves  my  life  ineffectual,  and  I  cannot  contem- 
plate an  ineffectual  life  patiently.  I  am  by  my 
nature  impelled  to  refuse  that.  I  assert  that  it 
is  not  so.  I  assert  therefore  that  I  am  important 
in  a  scheme,  that  we  all  are  important  in  that 
scheme,  that  the  wheel-smashed  frog  in  the  road 
and  the  fly  drowning  in  the  milk  are  important 
and  correlated  with  me.  What  the  scheme  as  a 
whole  is  I  do  not  know;  with  my  limited  mind  I 
cannot  know.  There  I  become  a  Mystic.  I  use 
the  word  scheme  because  it  is  the  best  word 
available,  but  I  strain  it  in  using  it.  I  do  not 
wish  to  imply  a  schemer,  but  only  order  and  co- 
ordination as  distinguished  from  haphazard.  "  All 
this  is  important,  all  this  is  profoundly  signifi- 
cant." I  say  it  of  the  universe,  as  a  child  that 
has  not  learnt  to  read  might  say  it  of  a  parchment 
agreement.  I  can't  read  the  universe,  but  I  can 
believe  that  this  is  so. 

And  this    unfounded  and    arbitrary  declara- 


Of  Belief  67 

tion  of  the  ultimate  lightness  and  significance  of 
things  I  call  the  Act  of  Faith.  It  is  my  funda- 
mental religious  confession.  It  is  a  voluntary 
and  deliberate  determination  to  believe,  it  is  a 
choice  made. 


§2. 


On  Using  the  Name  of  God. — You  may  say 
if  you  will  that  this  scheme  I  talk  about,  this 
something  that  gives  Importance  and  correlation 
and  significance,  is  what  is  meant  by  God.  You 
may  embark  upon  a  logical  wrangle  here  with  me 
if  you  have  failed  to  master  what  I  have  hitherto 
said  about  the  meaning  of  words.  If  a  Scheme, 
you  will  say,  then  there  must  be  a  Schemer. 

But  I  repeat,  I  am  using  scheme  and  importance 
and  significance  here  only  in  a  spirit  of  analogy 
because  I  can  find  no  better  words,  and  I  will  not 
allow  myself  to  be  entangled  by  an  insistence 
upon  their  implications. 

Yet  let  me  confess  I  am  greatly  attracted  by 
such  fine  phrases  as  the  Will  of  God,  the  Hand  of 
God,  the  Great  Commander.  These  do  most 
wonderfully  express  aspects  of  this  belief  I  choose 
to  hold.  I  think  if  there  had  been  no  gods  before, 
I  would  call  this  God.  But  I  feel  that  there 
is  a  great  danger  in  doing  this  sort  of  thing 
unguardedly.  Many  people  would  be  glad  for 
rather  trivial  and  unworthy  reasons  that  I  should 

68 


Of  Belief  69 

confess  a  faith  in  God  and  few  would  take  offence. 
But  the  run  of  people  even  nowadays  mean  some- 
thing more  and  something  different  when  they 
say  "God."  They  intend  a  personality  exterior 
to  them  and  limited,  and  they  will  instantly  con- 
clude I  mean  the  same  thing.  To  permit  that 
misconception  is,  I  feel,  the  first  step  on  the 
slippery  slope  of  meretricious  complaisance,  is  to 
become  in  some  small  measure  a  successor  of 
those  who  cried,  "Great  is  Diana  of  the  Ephe- 
sians."  Occasionally  we  may  best  serve  the  God 
of  Truth  by  denying  him. 

Yet  at  times  I  admit  the  sense  of  personality 
in  the  universe  is  very  strong.  If  I  am  confessing, 
I  do  not  see  why  I  should  not  confess  up  to  the 
hilt.  At  times  in  the  silence  of  the  night  and  in 
rare  lonely  moments,  I  come  upon  a  sort  of  com- 
munion of  myself  and  something  great  that  is  not 
myself.  It  is  perhaps  poverty  of  mind  and 
language  obliges  me  to  say  then  this  universal 
scheme  takes  on  the  effect  of  a  sympathetic 
person — and  my  communion  a  quality  of 
fearless  worship.  These  moments  happen  and 
they  are  the  supreme  fact  in  my  religious  life 
to  me,  they  are  the  crown  of  my  religious 
experiences. 

None  the  less,  I  do  not  usually  speak  of  God 


70  First  and  Last  Things 

even  in  regard  to  these  moments,  and  where  I  do 
use  that  word  it  must  be  understood  that  I  use 
it  as  a  personification  of  something  entirely 
different  in  nature  from  the  personality  of  a 
human  being. 


§3- 


Free-Will  and  Predestination. — And  now 
let  me  return  to  a  point  raised  in  the  first  part  in 
§  9.  Is  the  whole  of  this  scheme  of  things  settled 
and  done?  The  whole  trend  of  Science  is  to  that 
belief.  On  the  scientific  plane  one  is  a  fatalist, 
the  universe  a  system  of  inevitable  consequences. 
But  as  I  show  in  that  section  referred  to,  it  is  quite 
possible  to  accept  as  true  in  their  several  planes 
both  Predestination  and  Free-Will.1  If  you  ask 
me,  I  think  I  should  say  I  incline  to  believe  in 
predestination  and  do  quite  completely  believe 
in  free-will.     The  important  belief  is  free-will. 

But  does  the  whole  universe  of  fact,  the  external 
world  about  me,  the  mysterious  internal  world 
from  which  my  motives  rise,  form  one  rigid  and 
fated  system  as  Determinists  teach?  Do  I  be- 
lieve that  had  one  a  mind  ideally  clear  and  power- 
ful, the  whole  universe  would  seem  orderly  and 
absolutely  predestined?     I  incline  to  that  belief. 

»  I  use  Free-Will  in  the  sense  of  self-determinism  and  not 
as  it  is  defined  by  Professor  William  James,  and  Predestina- 
tion as  equivalent  to  the  conception  of  a  universe  rigid  in 
time  and  space. 

71 


72  First  and  Last  Things 

I  do  not  harshly  believe  it,  but  I  admit  its  large 
plausibility — that  is  all.  I  see  no  value  whatever 
in  jumping  to  a  decision.  One  or  two  Pragma- 
tists,  so  far  as  I  can  understand  them,  do  not  hold 
this  view  of  Predestination  at  all.  But  as  a  pro- 
visional assumption  it  underlies  most  scientific 
work. 

I  glance  at  this  question  rather  to  express  a 
detachment  than  a  view. 

From  me  as  a  person  this  theory  of  predestina- 
tion has  no  practical  value.  At  the  utmost  it  is 
an  interesting  theory  like  the  theory  that  there 
is  a  fourth  dimension.  There  may  be  a  fourth 
dimension  of  space,  but  one  gets  along  quite 
well  by  assuming  there  are  just  three.  It  may 
be  knowable  the  next  time  I  come  to  cross-roads 
which  I  shall  take.  Possibly  that  knowledge 
actually  exists  somewhere.  There  are  those  who 
will  tell  you  they  can  get  intimations  in  the  matter 
from  packs  of  cards  or  the  palms  of  my  hands,  or 
see  by  peering  into  crystals.  Of  such  beliefs  I 
am  entirely  free.  The  fact  is  I  believe  that  neither 
I  know  nor  anybody  else  who  is  practically  con- 
cerned knows  which  I  shall  take.  I  hesitate,  I 
choose  just  as  though  the  thing  was  unknowable. 
For  me  and  my  conduct  there  is  that  much  wide 
practical  margin  of  freedom. 


Of  Belief  73 

I  am  free  and  freely  and  responsibly  making 
the  future — so  far  as  I  am  concerned.  You  others 
are  equally  free.  On  that  theory  I  find  my  life 
will  work,  and  on  a  theory  of  mechanical  pre- 
destination nothing  works. 

I  take  the  former  theory  therefore  for  my  every- 
day purposes,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  so  does 
everybody  else.  I  regard  myself  as  a  free  respon- 
sible person  among  free  responsible  persons. 


§4- 


A  Picture  of  the  World  of  Men. — Now  I 
have  already  given  a  first  picture  of  the  world 
of  fact  as  it  shaped  itself  upon  my  mind.  Let 
me  now  give  a  second  picture  of  this  world  in 
which  I  find  myself,  a  picture  in  a  rather  different 
key  and  at  a  different  level,  in  which  I  turn  to 
a  new  set  of  aspects  and  bring  into  the  foreground 
the  other  minds  which  are  with  me  in  the  midst 
of  this  great  spectacle. 

What  am  I? 

Here  is  a  question  to  which  in  all  ages  men 
have  sought  to  give  a  clear  unambiguous  answer, 
and  to  which  a  clear  unambiguous  answer  is  mani- 
festly unfitted.  Am  I  my  body?  Yes  or  no?  It 
seems  to  me  that  I  can  externalise  and  think  of 
as  "not  myself"  nearly  everything  that  pertains 
to  my  body;  hands  and  feet,  and  even  the  most 
secret  and  central  of  those  living  and  hidden 
parts,  the  pulsing  arteries,  the  throbbing  nerves, 
the  ganglionic  centres,  that  no  eye,  save  for  the 
surgeon's  knife,  has  ever  seen  or  ever  will  see 
until  they  coagulate  in  decay.     So  far  I  am  not 

74 


Of  Belief  75 

my  body,  and  then  as  clearly,  since  I  suffer 
through  it,  see  the  whole  world  through  it  and 
am  always  to  be  called  upon  where  it  is,  I  am  it. 
Am  I  a  mind  mysteriously  linked  to  this  thing 
of  matter  and  endeavour?  So  I  can  present 
myself.  I  seem  to  be  a  consciousness,  vague  and 
insecure,  placed  between  two  worlds.  One  of 
these  worlds  seems  clearly  "not  me,"  the  other 
is  more  closely  identified  with  me  and  yet  is  still 
imperfectly  me.  The  first  I  call  the  exterior 
world  and  it  presents  itself  to  me  as  existing  in 
Time  and  Space.  In  a  certain  way  I  seem  able 
to  interfere  with  it  and  control  it.  The  second 
is  the  interior  world,  having  no  forms  in  space 
and  only  a  vague  evasive  reference  to  time,  from 
which  motives  arise  and  storms  of  emotion,  which 
acts  and  reacts  constantly  and  in  untraceable 
ways  with  my  conscious  mind.  And  that  con- 
sciousness itself  hangs  and  drifts  about  the  region 
where  the  inner  world  and  the  outer  world  meet, 
much  as  a  patch  of  limelight  drifts  about  the 
stage,  illuminating,  affecting,  following  no  mani- 
fest law  except  that  usually  it  centres  upon  the 
hero,  my  Ego. 

It  seems  to  me  that  to  put  the  thing  much 
more  precisely  than  this  is  to  depart  from  the 
reality  of  the  matter. 


76  First  and  Last  Things 

But  so  departing  a  little,  let  me  borrow  a 
phrase  from  Herbart  and  identify  myself  more 
particularly  with  my  mental  self.  It  seems  to 
me  that  I  may  speak  of  myself  as  a  circle  of 
thought  and  experience  hung  between  these  two 
imperfectly  understood  worlds  of  the  internal 
and  the  external  and  passing  imperceptibly  into 
the  former.  The  external  world  impresses  me  as 
being,  as  a  practical  fact,  common  to  me  and 
many  other  creatures  similar  to  myself;  the  in- 
ternal I  find  similar  but  not  identical  with  theirs. 
It  is  mine.  It  seems  to  me  at  times  no  more 
than  something  cut  off  from  that  external  world 
and  put  into  a  sort  of  pit  or  cave,  much  as  all  the 
inner  mystery  of  my  body,  those  living,  writhing, 
warm  and  thrilling  organs  are  isolated,  hidden 
from  all  eyes  and  interference  so  long  as  I  remain 
alive.  And  I  myself,  the  essential  me,  am  the 
light  and  watcher  in  the  mouth  of  the  cave. 

So  I  think  of  myself,  and  so  I  think  of  all  other 
human  beings,  as  circles  of  thought  and  ex- 
perience, each  a  little  different  from  the  others. 
Each  human  being  I  see  as  essentially  a  circle  of 
thought  between  an  internal  and  an  external 
world. 

I  figure  these  circles  of  thought  as  more  or 
less  imperfectly  focussed  pictures,  all  a  little  askew 


Of  Belief  77 

and  vague  as  to  margins  and  distances.  In  the 
internal  world  arise  motives  and  they  pass  out- 
ward through  the  circle  of  thought  and  are  modi- 
fied and  directed  by  it  into  external  acts.  And 
through  speech,  example  and  a  hundred  various 
acts  one  such  circle,  one  human  mind,  lights  and 
enlarges  and  plays  upon  another.  That  is  the 
image  under  which  the  interrelation  of  minds 
presents  itself  to  me. 


§5- 


The  Problem  of  Motives  the  Real  Problem 
of  Life. — Now  each  self  among  us  for  all  its 
fluctuations  and  vagueness  of  boundary,  is,  as  I 
have  already  pointed  out,  invincibly  persuaded 
of  Free-Will.  That  is  to  say  it  has  a  persuasion 
of  responsible  control  over  the  impulses  that  teem 
from  the  internal  world  and  tend  to  express  them- 
selves in  act.  The  problem  of  that  control  and 
its  solution  is  the  reality  of  life.  "What  am  I  to 
do?"  is  the  perpetual  question  of  our  existence. 
Our  metaphysics,  our  beliefs  are  all  sought  as 
subsidiary  to  that  and  have  no  significance  with- 
out it. 

I  confess  I  find  myself  a  confusion  of  motives 
beside  which  my  confusion  of  perceptions  pales 
into  insignificance. 

There  are  many  various  motives  and  mo- 
tives very  variously  estimated — some  are 
called  gross,  some  sublime,  some — such  as 
pride — wicked.  I  do  not  readily  accept  these 
classifications. 

Many  people  seem  to  make  a  selection  among 

78 


Of  Belief  79 

their  motives  without  much  enquiry,  taking 
those  classifications  as  just;  they  seek  to  lead 
what  they  call  pure  lives  and  useful  lives  and 
to  set  aside  whole  sets  of  motives  which  do 
not  accord  with  this  determination.  Some 
exclude  the  seeking  of  pleasure  as  a  permissible 
motive,  some  the  love  of  beauty,  some  insist 
upon  one's  "being  oneself"  and  prohibit  or 
limit  responses  to  exterior  opinions.  Most  of 
such  selections  strike  me  as  wanton  and  hasty. 
I  decline  to  dismiss  any  of  my  motives  at  all 
in  that  wholesale  way.  Just  as  I  believe  I  am 
important  in  the  scheme  of  things,  so  I  believe 
are  all  my  motives.  Turning  one's  back  on  any 
set  of  them  seems  to  me  to  savour  of  the  head- 
long actions  of  stupidity.  To  suppress  a  pas- 
sion or  a  curiosity  for  the  sake  of  suppressing 
a  passion  is  to  my  mind  just  the  burial  of  a 
talent  that  has  been  entrusted  to  one's  care. 
One  has,  I  feel,  to  take  all  these  things  as 
weapons  and  instruments,  material  in  the  ser- 
vice of  the  scheme;  one  has  to  take  them  in 
the  end  gravely  and  do  right  among  them  un- 
biassed in  favour  of  any  set.  To  take  some 
poor  appetite  and  fling  it  out  is  to  my  mind 
a  cheap  and  unsatisfactory  way  of  simplifying 
one's   moral   problems.     One  has   to  take   these 


80  First  and  Last  Things 

things  in  oneself,  I  feel — even  if  one  knows  them 
to  be  dangerous  things,  even  if  one  is  sure  they 
have  an  evil  side. 

Let  me  however  in  order  to  express  my  attitude 
better  make  a  rough  grouping  of  the  motives  I 
find  in  myself  and  the  people  about  me. 


§6. 


A  Review  of  Motives. — I  cannot  divide  them 
into  clearly  defined  classes,  but  I  may  perhaps 
begin  with  those  that  bring  one  into  the  widest 
sympathy  with  living  things  and  go  on  to  those 
one  shares  only  with  highly  intelligent  and  com- 
plex human  beings. 

There  come  first  the  desires  one  shares  with  those 
more  limited  souls  the  beasts,  just  as  much  as  one 
does  with  one's  fellow-man.  These  are  the  bodily 
appetites  and  the  crude  emotions  of  fear  and 
resentment.  These  first  clamour  for  attention 
and  must  be  assuaged  or  controlled  before  the 
other  sets  come  into  play. 

Now  in  this  matter  of  physical  appetites  I  do 
not  know  whether  to  describe  myself  as  a  sensualist 
or  an  ascetic.  If  an  ascetic  is  one  who  suppresses 
to  a  minimum  all  deference  to  these  impulses, 
then  certainly  I  am  not  an  ascetic;  if  a  sensualist 
is  one  who  gives  himself  to  heedless  gratification, 
then  certainly  I  am  not  a  sensualist.  But  I  find 
myself  balanced  in  an  intermediate  position  by 
something  that  I  will  speak  of  as  the  sense  of 

6  81 


82  First  and  Last  Things 

Beauty.  This  sense  of  Beauty  is  something  in 
me  which  demands  not  simply  gratification  but 
the  best  and  keenest  of  a  sense  or  continuance  of 
sense  impressions  and  which  refuses  coarse  quan- 
titive  assuagements.  It  ranges  all  over  the  senses 
and  just  as  I  refuse  to  wholly  cut  off  any  of  my 
motives,  so  do  I  refuse  to  limit  its  use  to  the  plane 
of  the  eye  or  the  ear. 

It  seems  to  me  entirely  just  to  speak  of  beauty 
in  matters  of  scent  and  taste,  to  talk  not  only  of 
beautiful  skies  and  beautiful  sounds  but  of  beauti- 
ful beer  and  beautiful  cheese!  The  balance  as 
between  asceticism  and  sensuality  comes  in,  it 
seems  to  me,  if  we  remember  that  to  drink  well 
one  must  not  have  drunken  for  some  time,  that 
to  see  well  one's  eye  must  be  clear,  that  to  make 
love  well  one  must  be  fit  and  gracious  and  sweet 
and  disciplined  from  top  to  toe,  that  the  finest 
sense  of  all — the  joyous  sense  of  bodily  well-being 
— comes  only  with  exercises  and  restraints  and 
fine  living.  There  I  think  lies  the  way  of  my  dis- 
position. I  do  not  want  to  live  in  the  sensual  sty, 
but  also  I  do  not  want  to  scratch  in  the  tub  of 
Diogenes. 

But  I  diverge  a  little  in  these  comments  from 
my  present  business  of  classifying  motives. 

I  perceive  hypertrophied  in  myself  and  many 


Of  Belief  83 

sympathetic  human  beings,  a  passion  that  many 
animals  certainly  possess,  the  beautiful  and  fear- 
less cousin  of  fear,  Curiosity,  that  seeks  keenly  for 
knowing  and  feeling.  Apart  from  appetites  and 
bodily  desires  and  blind  impulses,  I  want  most 
urgently  to  know  and  feel  for  the  sake  of  knowing 
and  feeling.  I  want  to  go  round  corners  and  see 
what  is  there,  to  cross  mountain  ranges,  to  open 
boxes  and  parcels.  Young  animals  at  least  have 
that  disposition  too.  For  me  it  is  something  that 
mingles  with  all  my  desires.  Much  more  to  me 
than  the  desire  to  live  is  the  desire  to  taste  life. 
I  am  not  happy  until  I  have  done  and  felt  things. 
I  want  to  get  as  near  as  I  can  to  the  thrill  of  a 
dog  going  into  a  fight  or  the  delight  of  a  bird  in 
the  air.  And  not  simply  in  the  heroic  field  of 
war  and  the  air  do  I  want  to  understand.  I  want 
to  know  something  of  the  jolly  wholesome  satis- 
faction that  a  hungry  pig  must  find  in  its  wash. 
I  want  to  get  the  fine  quintessence  of  that. 

I  do  not  think  that  in  this  I  confess  to  any  un- 
usual temperament.  I  think  that  the  more  closely 
mentally  animated  people  scrutinise  their  motives 
the  less  is  the  importance  they  will  attach  to  mere 
physical  and  brute  urgencies  and  the  more  to 
curiosity. 

Next  after  Curiosity  come  those  desires  and 


84  First  and  Last  Things 

motives  that  one  shares  perhaps  with  some  social 
beasts,  but  far  more  so  as  a  conscious  thing  with 
men  alone.  These  desires  and  motives  all  centre 
on  a  clearly  apprehended  "self"  in  relation  to 
"others,"  they  are  the  essentially  egotistical 
group.  They  are  self-assertion  in  all  its  forms. 
I  hav<;  dealt  with  motives  toward  gratification 
and  motives  toward  experience,  this  set  of  motives 
is  for  the  sake  of  oneself.  Since  they  are  the  most 
acutely  conscious  motives  in  unthinking  men, 
there  is  a  tendency  on  the  part  of  unthinking 
philosophers  to  speak  of  them  as  though  vanity, 
self-seeking,  self-interest,  were  the  only  motives. 
But  one  has  but  to  reflect  on  what  has  gone  before 
to  realise  that  this  is  not  so.  One  finds  these 
*'self"  motives  vary  with  the  mental  power  and 
[raining  of  the  individual ;  here  they  are  fragmen- 
tary and  discursive,  there  drawn  tight  together 
into  a  coherent  scheme.  Where  they  are  weak 
they  mingle  with  the  animal  motives  and  curiosity 
like  travellers  in  a  busy  market-place,  but  where 
the  sense  of  self  is  strong  they  become  rulers  and 
regulators,  self-seeking  becomes  deliberate  and 
sustained  in  the  case  of  the  human  being,  vanity 
passes  into  pride. 

Here  again  that  something  in  the  mind  so  difficult 
to  define,  so  easy  for  all  who  understand  to  under- 


Of  Belief  85 

stand,  that  something  which  insists  upon  a  best 
and  keenest,  the  desire  for  beauty,  comes  into  the 
play  of  motives.  Pride  demands  a  beautiful  self 
and  would  discipline  all  other  passions  to  its 
service.  It  also  demands  recognition  for  that 
beautiful  self.  Now  pride,  I  know,  is  denounced 
by  many  as  the  essential  quality  of  sin.  We  are 
taught  that  " self-abnegation"  is  the  substance 
of  virtue  and  self-forgetfulness  the  inseparable 
quality  of  right  conduct.  But  indeed  I  cannot  so 
dismiss  egotism  and  that  Pride  which  was  the 
first  form  in  which  the  desire  to  rule  oneself  as  a 
whole  came  to  me.  Through  pride  one  shapes 
oneself  towards  a  best,  though  at  first  it  may  be 
an  ill-conceived  best.  Pride  is  not  always  arro- 
gance and  aggression.  There  is  that  pride  that 
does  not  ape  but  learn  humility. 

And  with  the  human  imagination  all  these 
elementary  instincts,  of  the  flesh,  of  curiosity,  of 
self-assertion,  become  only  the  basal  substance  of 
a  huge  elaborate  edifice  of  secondary  motive  and 
intention.  We  live  in  a  great  flood  of  example 
and  suggestion,  our  curiosity  and  our  social  quality 
impel  us  to  a  thousand  imitations,  to  dramatic 
attitudes  and  subtly  obscure  ends.  Our  pride 
turns  this  way  and  that  as  we  respond  to  new 
notes  in  the  world  about  us.      We  are  arenas  for 


86  First  and  Last  Things 

a  conflict  between  suggestions  flung  in  from  all 
sources,  from  the  most  diverse  and  essentially 
incompatible  sources.  We  live  long  hours  and 
days  in  a  kind  of  dream,  negligent  of  self-interest, 
our  elementary  passions  in  abeyance,  among  these 
derivative  things. 


§7- 


The  Synthetic  Motive. — Such  it  seems  to  me 
are  the  chief  masses  of  the  complex  of  motive  in 
us,  the  group  of  sense,  the  group  of  pride,  curi- 
osity and  the  imitative  and  suggested  motives, 
making  up  the  system  of  impulses  which  is  our 
will.  Such  has  been  the  common  outfit  of  mo- 
tives in  every  age,  and  in  every  age  its  meUe  has 
been  found  insufficient  in  itself.  It  is  a  hetero- 
geneous system,  it  does  not  form  in  any  sense  a 
completed  or  balanced  system,  its  constituents 
are  variable  and  compete  among  themselves. 
They  are  not  so  much  arranged  about  one  another 
as  superposed  and  higgledy-piggledy.  The  senses 
war  with  pride  and  one  another,  the  motives  sug- 
gested to  us  fall  into  conflict  with  this  element  or 
that  of  our  intimate  and  habitual  selves.  We  find 
all  our  instincts  are  snares  to  excess.  Excesses 
of  indulgence  lead  to  excesses  of  abstinence,  and 
even  the  sense  of  beauty  may  be  clouded  and  be- 
tray. So  to  us  all,  even  for  the  most  balanced  of 
us,  come  disappointments,  regrets,  gaps;  and  for 

most  of  us  who  are    ill-balanced,   miseries    and 

87 


88  First  and  Last  Things 

despairs.  Nearly  all  of  us  want  something  to  hold 
us  together — something  to  dominate  this  swarming 
confusion  and  save  us  from  the  black  misery  of 
wounded  and  exploded  pride,  of  thwarted  desire, 
of  futile  conclusions.  We  want  more  oneness, 
some  steadying  thing  that  will  afford  an  escape 
from  fluctuations. 

Different  people,  of  differing  temperament  and 
tradition  have  sought  oneness,  this  steadying  and 
universalising  thing,  in  various  manners.  Some 
have  attained  it  in  this  manner  and  some  in  that. 
Scarcely  a  religious  system  has  existed  that  has 
not  worked  effectively  and  proved  true  for  some- 
one. To  me  it  seems  that  the  need  is  synthetic, 
that  some  synthetic  idea  and  belief  is  needed  to 
harmonise  one's  life,  to  give  a  law  by  which 
motive  may  be  tried  against  motive  and  an 
effectual  peace  of  mind  achieved.  I  want  an 
active  peace  and  not  a  quiescence,  and  I  do  not 
want  to  suppress  and  expel  any  motive  at  all. 
But  to  many  people  the  effort  takes  the  form  of 
attempts  to  cut  off  some  part  of  oneself  as  it  were, 
to  repudiate  altogether  some  straining  or  dis- 
tressing or  disappointing  factor  in  the  scheme  of 
motives,  and  find  a  tranquillising  refuge  in  the 
residuum.  So  we  have  men  and  women  aban- 
doning   their    share    in    economic    development, 


Of  Belief  89 

crushing  the  impulses  and  evading  the  complica- 
tions that  arise  out  of  sex  and  flying  to  devotions 
and  simple  duties  in  nunneries  and  monasteries- 
we  have  people  cutting  their  lives  down  to  a 
vegetarian  dietary  and  scientific  research,  resort- 
ing to  excesses  of  self-discipline,  giving  themselves 
up  wholly  to  some  "art"  and  making  everything 
else  subordinate  to  that,  or,  going  in  another  di- 
rection, abandoning  pride  and  love  in  favour  of 
an  acquired  appetite  for  drugs  or  drink. 

Now  it  seems  to  me  that  this  desire  to  get  the 
confused  complex  of  life  simplified  is  essentially 
what  has  been  called  the  religious  motive  and 
that  the  manner  in  which  a  man  achieves  that 
simplification,  if  he  does  achieve  it,  and  imposes 
an  order  upon  his  life  is  his  religion.  I  find  in  the 
scheme  of  conversion  and  salvation  as  it  is  pre- 
sented by  man)7-  Christian  sects,  a  very  exact 
statement  of  the  mental  processes  I  am  trying  to 
express.  In  these  systems  this  discontent  with 
the  complexity  of  life  upon  which  religion  is  based, 
is  called  the  conviction  of  sin,  and  it  is  the  first 
phase  in  the  process  of  conversion — of  finding  sal- 
vation. It  leads  through  distress  and  confusion 
to  illumination,  to  the  act  of  faith  and  peace. 

And  after  peace  comes  the  beginning  of  right 
conduct.     If  you  believe  and  you  are  saved,  you 


90  First  and  Last  Things 

will  want  to  behave  well,  you  will  do  your  utmost 
to  behave  well  and  to  understand  what  is  behaving 
well,  and  you  will  feel  neither  shame  nor  disap- 
pointment when  after  all  you  fail.  You  will  say 
then,  "so  it  is  failure  I  had  to  achieve/'  And 
you  will  not  feel  bitterly  because  you  seem  unsuc- 
cessful beside  others  or  because  you  are  misunder- 
stood or  unjustly  treated,  you  will  not  bear  malice 
nor  cherish  anger  nor  seek  revenge,  you  will  never 
turn  towards  suicide  as  a  relief  from  intolerable 
things;  indeed  there  will  be  no  intolerable  things. 
You  will  have  peace  within  you. 

But  if  you  do  not  truly  believe  and  are  not 
saved,  you  will  know  it  because  you  will  still 
suffer  the  conflict  of  motives,  and  in  regrets,  con- 
fusions, remorses  and  discontents,  you  will  suffer 
the  penalties  of  the  unbeliever  and  the  lost.  You 
will  know  certainly  your  own  salvation. 


§8. 


The  Being  of  Mankind. — I  will  boldly  adopt 
the  technicalities  of  the  sects.  I  will  speak  as  a 
person  with  experience  and  declare  that  I  have 
been  through  the  distresses  of  despair  and  the 
conviction  of  sin  and  that  I  have  found  salvation. 

/  believe. 

I  believe  in  the  scheme,  in  the  Project  of  all 
things,  in  the  significance  of  myself  and  all  life, 
and  that  my  defects  and  uglinesses  and  failures, 
just  as  much  as  my  powers  and  successes  are 
things  that  are  necessary  and  important  and  con- 
tributory in  that  scheme,  that  scheme  which 
passes  my  understanding — and  that  no  thwarting 
of  my  conception,  not  even  the  cruelty  of  nature, 
now  defeats  or  can  defeat  my  faith,  however  much 
it  perplexes  my  mind. 

And  though  I  say  that  scheme  passes  my  under- 
standing, nevertheless  I  hope  you  will  see  no  in- 
consistency when  I  say  that  necessarily  it  has  an 
aspect  towards  me  that  I  find  imperative. 

It  has  an  aspect  that  I  can  perceive,  however 

dimly  and  fluctuatingly. 

91 


92  First  and  Last  Things 

I  take  it  that  to  perceive  this  aspect  to  the 
utmost  of  my  mental  power  and  to  shape  my 
acts  according  to  that  perception  is  my  function 
in  the  scheme,  that  if  I  hold  steadfastly  to  that 
conception,  I  am — saved.  I  find  in  that  idea  of 
perceiving  the  scheme  as  a  whole  towards  me  and 
in  this  attempt  to  perceive,  that  something  to 
which  all  my  other  emotions  and  passions  may 
contribute  by  gathering  and  contributing  ex- 
perience, and  through  which  the  synthesis  of  my 
life  becomes  possible. 

Let  me  try  to  convey  to  you  what  it  is  I  per- 
ceive, what  aspect  this  scheme  seems  to  bear  on 
the  whole  towards  me. 

The  essential  fact  in  man's  history  to  my  sense 
is  the  slow  unfolding  of  a  sense  of  community 
with  his  kind,  of  the  possibilities  of  co-operations 
leading  to  scarce-dreamt-of  collective  powers,  of 
a  synthesis  of  the  species,  of  the  development  of 
a  common  general  idea,  a  common  general  pur- 
pose out  of  a  present  confusion.  In  that  awaken- 
ing of  the  species,  one's  own  personal  being  lives 
and  moves — a  part  of  it  and  contributing  to  it. 
One's  individual  existence  is  not  so  entirely  cut  off 
as  it  seems  at  first ;  one's  entirely  separate  individu- 
ality is  another,  a  profounder,  among  the  subtle 
inherent  delusions  of  the  human  mind.     Between 


Of  Belief  93 

you  and  me  as  we  set  our  minds  together,  and 
between  us  and  the  rest  of  mankind,  there  is 
something,  something  real,  something  that  rises 
through  us  and  is  neither  you  nor  me,  that  com- 
prehends us,  that  is  thinking  here  and  using  me 
and  you  to  play  against  each  other  in  that  thinking 
just  as  my  finger  and  thumb  play  against  each 
other  as  I  hold  this  pen  with  which  I  write. 

Let  me  put  it  to  you  that  this  is  no  sentimental 
or  mystical  statement.  It  is  hard  fact  as  any 
hard  fact  we  know.  We,  you  and  I,  are  not  only 
parts  in  a  thought  process,  but  parts  of  one  flow 
of  blood  and  life.  Let  me  put  that  in  a  way  that 
may  be  new  to  some  of  you.  Let  me  remind  you 
of  what  is  sometimes  told  as  a  jest,  the  fact  that 
the  number  of  one's  ancestors  increases  as  we 
look  back  in  time.  Disregarding  the  chances  of 
intermarriage,  each  one  of  us  had  two  parents, 
four  grandparents,  eight  great-grandparents,  and 
so  on  backward  until  very  soon,  in  less  than  fifty 
generations,  we  should  find  that  but  for  the 
qualification  introduced,  we  should  have  all  the 
earth's  inhabitants  of  that  time  as  our  progenitors. 
For  a  hundred  generations  it  must  hold  abso- 
lutely true,  that  everyone  of  that  time  trho  has 
issue  living  now  is  ancestral  to  all  of  us.  That 
brings  the  thing  quite  within  the  historical  period. 


94  First  and  Last  Things 

There  is  not  a  western  European  palaeolithic  or 
neolithic  relic  that  is  not  a  family  relic  for  every 
soul  alive.     The  blood  in  our  veins  has  handled  it. 

And  there  is  something  more.  We  are  all 
going  to  mingle  our  blood  again.  We  cannot 
keep  ourselves  apart ;  the  worst  enemies  will  some 
day  come  to  the  Peace  of  Verona.  All  the  Mon- 
tagues and  Capulets  are  doomed  to  intermarry. 
A  time  will  come  in  less  than  fifty  generations 
when  all  the  population  of  the  world  will  have 
my  blood,  and  I  and  my  worst  enemy  will  not 
be  able  to  say  which  child  is  his  or  mine. 

But  you  may  retort — perhaps  you  may  die 
childless.  Then  all  the  sooner  the  whole  species 
will  get  the  little  legacy  of  my  personal  achieve- 
ment, whatever  it  may  be. 

You  see  that  from  this  point  of  view — which  is 
for  me  the  vividly  true  and  dominating  point  of 
view — our  individualities,  our  nations  and  states 
and  races  are  but  bubbles  and  clusters  of  foam 
upon  the  great  stream  of  the  blood  of  the  species, 
incidental  experiments  in  the  growing  knowledge 
and  consciousness  of  the  race. 

I  think  this  real  solidarity  of  humanity  is  a  fact 
that  is  only  being  slowly  apprehended,  that  it  is 
an  idea  that  we  who  have  come  to  realise  it  have 
to  assist  in  thinking  into  the  collective  mind.     I 


Of  Belief  95 

believe  the  species  is  still  as  a  whole  unawakened, 
still  sunken  in  the  delusion  of  the  permanent 
separateness  of  the  individual  and  of  races  and 
nations,  that  so  it  turns  upon  itself  and  frets 
against  itself  and  fails  to  see  the  stupendous 
possibilities  of  deliberate  self-development  that 
lie  open  to  it  now. 

I  see  myself  in  life  as  part  of  a  great  physical 
being  that  strains  and  I  believe  grows  towards 
Beauty,  and  of  a  great  mental  being  that  strains 
and  I  believe  grows  towards  knowledge  and  power. 
In  this  persuasion  that  I  am  a  gatherer  of  ex- 
perience, a  mere  tentacle  that  arranged  thought 
beside  thought  for  this  Being  of  the  Species,  this 
Being  that  grows  beautiful  and  powerful,  in  this 
persuasion  I  find  the  ruling  idea  of  which  I  stand 
in  need,  the  ruling  idea  that  reconciles  and  ad- 
judicates among  my  warring  motives.  In  it  I 
find  both  concentration  of  myself  and  escape 
from  myself,  in  a  word,  I  find  Salvation. 


§9- 


Individuality  an  Interlude — I  would  like 
in  a  parenthetical  section  to  expand  and  render 
a  little  more  concrete  this  idea  of  the  species  as 
one  divaricating  flow  of  blood  by  an  appeal  to  its 
arithmetical  aspect.  I  do  not  know  if  it  has  ever 
occurred  to  the  reader  to  compute  the  number  of 
his  living  ancestors  at  some  definite  remote  date, 
at,  let  us  say  the  year  one  of  the  Christian  era. 
Everyone  has  two  parents  and  four  grandparents, 
most  people  have  eight  great-grandparents,  and 
if  we  ignore  the  possibility  of  intermarriage  we 
shall  go  on  to  a  fresh  power  of  two  with  every 
generation,  thus : — 

Number  of  generations.      Number   of  ancestors. 

3  8 

4  16 

5  32 
7                                                 128 

10  1,024 

20  126,976 

3°  i5»745»o24 

40  1,956,282,976 

I  do  not  know  whether  the  average  age  of  the 

parent  at  the  birth  of  a  child  under  modern  con- 

96 


Of  Belief  97 

ditions  can  be  determined  from  existing  figures. 
There  is,  I  should  think,  a  strong  presumption 
that  it  has  been  a  rising  age.  There  may  have 
been  a  time  in  the  past  when  most  women  were 
mothers  in  their  early  teens  and  bore  most  or 
all  of  their  children  before  thirty,  and  when  men 
had  done  the  greater  part  of  their  procreation 
before  thirty-five;  this  is  still  the  case  in  many 
tropical  climates  and  I  do  not  think  that  I  favour 
my  own  case  unduly  by  assuming  that  the  average 
parent  must  be  about,  or  even  less  than,  five  and 
twenty.  This  gives  four  generations  to  a  century. 
At  that  rate  and  disregarding  intermarriage  of 
relations  the  ancestors  living  a  thousand  years 
ago  needed  to  account  for  a  living  person  would 
be  double  the  estimated  present  population  of 
the  world.  But  it  is  obvious  that  if  a  person 
sprang  from  a  marriage  of  first  cousins,  the  eight 
ancestors  of  the  third  generation  are  cut  down 
to  six;  if  of  cousins  at  the  next  stage,  to  fourteen 
in  the  fourth.  And  every  time  that  a  common 
pair  of  ancestors  appears  in  any  generation,  the 
number  of  ancestors  in  that  generation  must  be 
reduced  by  two  from  our  original  figures,  or  if  it 
is  only  one  common  ancestor,  by  one,  and  that 
as  we  go  back  that  reduction  will  have  to  be 
doubled,  quadrupled  and  so  on.     I  daresay  that 


98  First  and  Last  Things 

by  the  time  anyone  gets  to  the  8916  names  of 
his  Elizabethan  ancestors  he  will  find  quite  a 
large  number  repeated  over  and  over  again  in 
the  list  and  that  he  is  cut  down  to  perhaps  two  or 
three  thousand  separate  persons.  But  this  does 
not  effectually  invalidate  my  assumption  that 
if  we  go  back  only  to  the  closing  years  of  the 
Roman  Republic,  we  go  back  to  an  age  in  which 
nearly  every  person  within  the  confines  of  what 
was  then  the  Roman  Empire  who  left  living 
offspring  must  have  been  ancestral  to  every 
person  living  within  that  area  to-day.  No 
doubt  they  were  so  in  very  variable  measure. 
There  must  be  for  everyone  some  few  individu- 
als in  that  period  who  have  so  to  speak  inter- 
married with  themselves  again  and  again  and 
again  down  the  genealogical  series,  and  others 
who  are  represented  just  by  one  touch  of  their 
blood.  The  blood  of  the  Jews,  for  example,  has 
turned  in  upon  itself  again  and  again,  but  for 
all  we  know  one  Italian  proselyte  in  the  first  year 
of  the  Christian  era  may  have  made  by  this  time 
every  Jew  alive  a  descendant  of  some  unrecorded 
bastard  of  Julius  Caesar.  The  exclusive  breeding 
of  the  Jews  is  in  fact  the  most  effectual  guar- 
antee that  whatever  does  get  into  the  charmed 
circle  through  either  proselytism,  the  violence  of 


Of  Belief  99 

enemies,  or  feminine  unchastity,  must  ultimately 
pervade  it  universally. 

It  may  be  argued  that  as  a  matter  of  fact 
humanity  has  until  recently  been  segregated  in 
pools,  that  in  the  great  civilisation  of  China  for 
example,  humanity  has  pursued  its  own  inter- 
lacing system  of  inheritances  without  admixture 
from  other  streams  of  blood.  But  such  considera- 
tions only  defer  the  conclusion ;  they  do  not  stave 
it  off  indefinitely.  It  needs  only  that  one  philo- 
progenitive Chinaman  should  have  wandered  into 
those  regions  that  are  now  Russia,  about  the  time 
of  Pericles,  to  link  east  and  west  in  that  matter; 
one  Tartar  chieftain  in  the  Steppes  may  have 
given  a  daughter  to  a  Roman  soldier  and  sent 
his  grandsons  east  and  west  to  interlace  the 
branches  of  every  family  tree  in  the  world.  If 
any  race  stands  apart  it  is  such  an  isolated 
group  as  that  of  the  now  extinct  Tasmanian 
primitives  or  the  Australian  black.  But  even 
here,  in  the  remote  dawn  of  navigation,  may 
have  come  shipwrecked  Malays,  or  some  half- 
breed  woman  kidnapped  by  wandering  Phoe- 
nicians have  carried  this  link  of  blood  back 
to  the  western  world.  The  more  one  lets 
one's  imagination  play  upon  the  incalculable 
drift   and   soak    of    population,    the     more    one 


ioo  First  and  Last  Things 

realises  the  true  value  of  that  spreading  relation 
with  the  past. 

But  now  let  us  turn  in  the  other  direction,  the 
direction  of  the  future,  because  there  it  is  that 
this  series  of  considerations  becomes  most  edi- 
fying. It  is  the  commonest  trick  to  think  of 
one's  descendants  as  though  they  were  one's  own. 
We  are  told  that  one  of  the  dearest  human  motives 
is  the  desire  to  found  a  family,  but  think  how 
much  of  a  family  one  founds  at  the  best.  One's 
son  is  after  all  only  half  one's  blood ;  one's  grand- 
son only  one  quarter,  and  so  one  goes  on  until  it 
may  be  that  in  ten  brief  generations  one's  heir 
and  namesake  has  but  TTfe¥  th  of  one's  inherited 
self.  Those  other  thousand  odd  unpredictable 
people  thrust  in  and  mingle  with  one's  pride.  The 
trend  of  all  things  nowadays  is  to  render  such 
admixture  far  more  probable  and  facile  in  the 
future  than  in  the  past,  the  ever  increasing  ease 
of  communication,  the  great  and  increasing  drift 
of  population,  the  establishment  of  a  common 
standard  of  civilisation. 

It  is  a  pleasant  fancy  to  imagine  some  ambitious 
hoarder  of  wealth,  some  egotistical  founder  of 
name  and  family  returning  to  find  his  descendants 
— '-his  descendants — after  the  lapse  of  a  few  brief 
generations.     His  heir  and  namesake  may  have 


Of  Belief  101 

not  a  thousandth  part  of  his  heredity,  while  under 
some  other  name,  lost  to  all  the  tradition  and 
glory  of  him,  enfeebled  and  degenerate  through 
much  intermarriage,  may  be  a  multitude  of 
people  who  have  as  much  as  a  fiftieth  or  even 
more  of  his  quality.  They  may  even  be  in  servi- 
tude and  dependence  to  the.  really  alien  person 
who  is  head  of  the  family.  Our  founder  will  go 
through  the  spreading  record  of  offspring  and 
find  it  mixed  with  that  of  the  people  he  most  hated 
and  despised.  The  antagonists  he  wronged  and 
overcame  will  have  crept  into  his  line  and  recap- 
tured all  they  lost ;  have  played  the  cuckoo  in  his 
blood  and  acquisitions  and  turned  out  his  diluted 
strain  to  perish. 

And  while  I  am  being  thus  biological  let  me 
point  out  another  queer  aspect  in  which  our  ego- 
tism is  overridden  by  physical  facts.  Men  and 
women  are  apt  to  think  of  their  children  as  being 
their  very  own,  blood  of  their  blood  and  bone  of 
their  bone.  But  indeed  one  of  the  most  striking 
facts  in  this  matter  is  the  frequent  want  of  resem- 
blance between  parents  and  children.  It  is  one 
of  the  commonest  things  in  the  world  for  a  child 
to  resemble  an  aunt  or  an  uncle,  or  to  revive  a 
trait  of  some  grandparent  that  has  seemed  entirely 
lost   in    the   intervening   generation.     The    Men- 


102  First  and  Last  Things 

delians  have  given  much  attention  to  facts  of  this 
nature  and  though  their  general  method  of  ex- 
position seems  to  me  to  be  altogether  too  exact 
and  precise,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  it  is  often 
vividly  illuminating.  It  is  so  in  this  connexion. 
They  distinguish  between  "dominant"  and  "  reces- 
sive" qualities  and  they  establish  cases  in  which 
parents  with  all  the  dominant  characteristics 
produce  offspring  of  recessive  type.  Recessive 
qualities  are  constantly  being  masked  by  dominant 
ones  and  emerging  again  in  the  next  generation. 
It  is  not  the  individual  that  reproduces  himself, 
it  is  the  species  that  reproduces  through  the 
individual  and  often  in  spite  of  his  characteristics. 

The  race  flows  through  us,  the  race  is  the  drama 
and  we  are  the  incidents.  This  is  not  any  sort  of 
poetical  statement;  it  is  statement  of  fact.  In 
so  far  as  we  are  individuals,  so  far  as  we  seek  to 
follow  merely  individual  ends,  we  are  accidental, 
disconnected,  without  significance,  the  sport  of 
chance.  In  so  far  as  we  realise  ourselves  as 
experiments  of  the  species  for  the  species,  just 
in  so  far  do  we  escape  from  the  accidental  and 
the  chaotic.  We  are  episodes  in  an  experience 
greater  than  ourselves. 

Now  none  of  this,  if  you  read  me  aright,  makes 
for  the  suppression  of  one's  individual  difference, 


Of  Belief  103 

but  it  does  make  for  its  correlation.  We  have 
to  get  everything  we  can  out  of  ourselves  for  this 
very  reason  that  we  do  not  stand  alone ;  we  signify 
as  parts  of  a  universal  and  immortal  development. 
Our  separate  selves  are  our  charges,  the  talents 
of  which  much  has  to  be  made.  It  is  because 
we  are  episodical  in  the  great  synthesis  of  life 
that  we  have  to  make  the  utmost  of  our  individual 
lives  and  traits  and  possibilities. 


§  io. 

The  Mystic  Element. — What  stupendous  con- 
structive mental  and  physical  possibilities  are 
there  to  which  I  feel  I  am  contributing,  you  may 
ask,  when  I  feel  that  I  contribute  to  this  greater 
Being,  and  at  once  I  confess  I  become  vague  and 
mystical.  I  do  not  wish  to  pass  glibly  over  this 
point.  I  call  your  attention  to  the  fact  that  here 
I  am  mystical  and  arbitrary.  I  am  what  I  am, 
an  individual  in  this  present  phase.  I  can  see 
nothing  of  these  possibilities  except  that  they  will 
be  in  the  nature  of  those  indefinable  and  over- 
powering gleams  of  promise  in  our  world  that 
we  call  Beauty.  Elsewhere  (in  my  Food  of  the 
Gods)  I  have  tried  to  render  my  sense  of  our 
human  possibility  by  monstrous  images;  I  have 
written  of  those  who  will  "  stand  on  this  earth  as 
on  a  footstool  and  reach  out  their  hands  among 
the  stars."  But  that  is  mere  rhetoric  at  best,  a 
straining  image  of  unimaginable  things.  Things 
move  to  Power  and  Beauty ;  I  say  that  much  and 
I  have  said  all  that  I  can  say. 

But  what  is  Beauty,  you  ask,  and  what  will 

104 


Of  Belief  105 

Power  do?  And  here  I  reach  my  utmost  point 
in  the  direction  of  what  you  are  free  to  call  the 
rhapsodical  and  the  incomprehensible.  I  will  not 
even  attempt  to  define  Beauty.  I  will  not  because 
I  cannot.  To  me  it  is  a  final,  quite  indefinable 
thing.  Either  you  understand  it  or  you  do  not. 
Every  true  artist  and  many  who  are  not  artists 
know — they  know  there  is  something  that  shows 
suddenly — it  may  be  in  music,  it  may  be  in  paint- 
ing, it  may  be  in  the  sunlight  on  a  glacier  or 
shadow  cast  by  a  furnace  or  the  scent  of  a  flower ; 
it  may  be  in  the  person  or  act  of  some  fellow- 
creature,  but  it  is  right,  it  is  commanding,  it  is, 
to  use  theological  language,  the  revelation  of  God. 
To  the  mystery  of  Power  and  Beauty,  out  of 
the  earth  that  mothered  us,  we  move.  I  do 
not  attempt  to  define  Beauty  nor  even  to  dis- 
tinguish it  from  Power.  I  do  not  think  indeed 
that  one  can  effectually  distinguish  these  aspects 
of  life.  I  do  not  know  how  far  Beauty  may  not 
be  simply  fulness  and  clearness  of  sensation,  a 
momentary  unveiling  of  things  hitherto  seen  but 
not  dully  and  darkly.  As  I  have  already  said 
there  may  be  beauty  in  the  feeling  of  beer  in  the 
throat,  in  the  taste  of  cheese  in  the  mouth,  there 
may  be  beauty  in  the  scent  of  earth,  in  the  warmth 
of  a  body,  in  the  sensation  of  waking  from  sleep. 


106  First  and  Last  Things 

I  use  the  word  Beauty  therefore  in  its  widest 
possible  sense,  ranging  far  beyond  the  special 
beauties  that  art  discovers  and  develops.  Per- 
haps as  we  pass  from  death  to  life  all  things  become 
beautiful.  The  utmost  I  can  do  in  conveying 
what  I  mean  by  Beauty  is  to  tell  of  things  that 
I  have  perceived  to  be  beautiful  as  beautifully  as 
I  can  tell  of  them.  It  may  be,  as  I  suggest  else- 
where, Beauty  is  a  thing  synthetic  and  not  simple ; 
it  is  a  common  effect  produced  by  a  great  medley 
of  causes,  a  larger  aspect  of  harmony. 

But  the  question  of  what  Beauty  is  does  not 
very  greatly  concern  me,  since  I  have  known  it 
when  I  met  it  and  almost  every  day  in  life  I  seem 
to  apprehend  it  more  and  to  find  it  more  sufficient 
and  satisfying.  It  is  light,  I  fall  back  upon  that 
image,  it  is  all  things  that  light  can  be,  beacon, 
elucidation,  pleasure,  comfort  and  consolation, 
promise,  warning,  the  vision  of  reality. 


§  II. 

The  Synthesis. — It  seems  to  me  that  the 
whole  living  creation  may  be  regarded  as  walking 
in  its  sleep,  as  walking  in  the  sleep  of  in- 
stinct and  individualised  illusion,  and  that  now 
out  of  it  all  rises  man,  beginning  to  perceive 
his  larger  self,  his  universal  brotherhood  and 
a  collective  synthetic  purpose  to  realise  power 
and  beauty.    .    .    . 

I  write  this  down.  It  is  the  form  of 
my  belief  and  that  unanalysable  something 
called  Beauty  is  the  light  that  falls  upon 
that    form. 

It  is  only  by  such  images,  it  is  only  by  the  use 

of  what  are  practically  Parables,  that  I  can  in 

any  way  express  these  things  in  my  mind.    These 

two  things,  I  say,  are  the  two  aspects  of  my  belief; 

one  is  the  form  and  the  other  the  light.     The 

former  places  me  as  it  were  in  a  scheme,   the  latter 

illuminates  and  inspires  me.     I  am  a  member  in 

that  great  Being  and  my  function  is,  I  take  it, 

to  develop  my  capacity  for  Beauty  and  convey 

the  perception  of  it  to  my  fellows,  to  gather  and 

store  experience  and  increase  the  racial  conscious- 

107 


108  First  and  Last  Things 

ness.  I  hazard  no  whys  nor  wherefores.  That  is 
how  I  see  things;  that  is  how  the  universe  in  re- 
sponse to  my  demand  for  a  synthesising  aspect, 
presents  itself  to  me. 


§  12. 

Of  Personal  Immortality. — These  are  my 
beliefs.  They  begin  with  arbitrary  assumptions; 
they  end  in  a  mystery.  So  do  all  beliefs  that  are 
not  grossly  utilitarian  and  material,  promising 
houris  and  deathless  appetite  or  endless  hunting 
or  a  cosmic  mortgage.  The  Peace  of  God  passe th 
understanding,  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  within 
us  and  without  can  be  presented  only  by  parables. 
But  the  unapproachable  distance  and  vagueness 
of  these  things  make  them  none  the  less  necessary, 
just  as  a  cloud  upon  a  mountain  or  sunlight  re- 
motely seen  upon  the  sea  are  as  real  as,  and  to 
many  people  far  more  necessary  than,  pork  chops. 
The  driven  swine  may  root  and  take  no  heed,  but 
man  the  dreamer  drives.  And  because  these 
things  are  vague  and  impalpable  and  wilfully 
attained,  it  is  none  the  less  important  that  they 
should  be  rendered  with  all  the  truth  of  one's 
being.  To  be  atmospherically  vague  is  one  thing, 
to  be  haphazard,  wanton  and  untruthful,  quite 
another. 

But   here  I  may  give   a   specific  answer  to  a 

109 


no  First  and  Last  Things 

question  that  many  find  profoundly  important 
though  indeed  it  is  already  implicitly  answered  in 
what  has  gone  before. 

I  do  not  believe  I  have  any  personal  immor- 
tality. I  am  part  of  an  immortality  perhaps; 
but  that  is  different.  I  am  not  the  continuing 
thing.  I  personally  am  experimental,  incidental. 
I  feel  I  have  to  do  something,  a  number  of  things 
no  one  else  could  do  and  then  I  am  finished  and 
finished  altogether.  Then  my  substance  returns 
to  the  common  lot.  I  am  a  temporary  enclosure 
for  a  temporary  purpose;  that  served,  and  my 
skull  and  teeth,  my  idiosyncrasy  and  desire,  will 
disperse,  I  believe,  like  the  timbers  of  a  booth 
after  a  fair. 

Let  me  shift  my  ground  a  little  and  ask  you  to 
consider  what  is  involved  in  the  alternative. 

My  idea  of  the  unknown  scheme  is  of  something 
so  wide  and  deep  that  I  cannot  conceive  it  en- 
cumbered by  my  egotism  perpetually.  I  shall 
serve  my  purpose  and  pass  under  the  wheel  and 
end.  That  distresses  me  not  at  all.  Immortality 
would  distress  and  perplex  me.  If  I  may  put  this 
in  a  mixture  of  theological  and  social  language, 
I  cannot  respect,  I  cannot  believe  in  a  God  who  is 
always  going  about  with  me. 

But  this  is  after  all  what  I  feel  is  true  and  what 


Of  Belief  in 

I  choose  to  believe.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  fact. 
So  far  as  that  goes  there  is  no  evidence  that  I  am 
immortal  and  none  that  I  am  not. 

I  may  be  altogether  wrong  in  my  beliefs ;  I  may 
be  misled  by  the  appearances  of  things.  I  believe 
in  the  great  and  growing  Being  of  the  Species 
from  which  I  rise,  to  which  I  return,  and  which, 
it  may  be,  will  ultimately  even  transcend  the 
limitation  of  the  Species  and  grow  into  the  Con- 
scious Being,  the  eternally  conscious  Being  of  all 
things.  Believing  that  I  cannot  also  believe 
that  my  peculiar  little  thread  will  not  undergo 
synthesis  and  vanish  as  a  separate  thing. 

And  what  after  all  is  my  distinctive  something, 
certain  capacities,  certain  incapacities,  an  uncer- 
tain memory,  a  hesitating  presence?  It  matters 
no  doubt  in  its  place  and  time,  as  all  things  matter 
in  their  place  and  time,  but  where  in  it  all  is  the 
eternally  indispensable?  The  great  things  of  my 
life,  love,  faith,  the  intimation  of  beauty,  the 
things  most  savouring  of  immortality,  are  the 
things  most  general,  the  things  most  shared,  and 
least  distinctively  me. 


§  13- 

A  Criticism  of  Christianity. — And  here  per- 
haps, before  I  go  on  to  the  question  of  Conduct, 
is  the  place  to  define  a  relationship  to  that  system 
of  faith  and  religious  observance  out  of  which  I 
and  most  of  my  readers  have  come.  How  do  these 
beliefs  on  which  I  base  my  rule  of  conduct  stand 
to  Christianity? 

They  do  not  stand  in  any  attitude  of  antagonism. 
A  religious  system  so  many-faced  and  so  enduring 
as  Christianity  must  necessarily  be  saturated 
with  truth  even  if  it  be  not  wholly  true.  To  as- 
sume as  the  Atheist  and  Deist  seem  to  do,  that 
Christianity  is  a  sort  of  disease  that  came  upon 
civilisation,  an  unprofitable  and  wasting  disease, 
is  to  deny  that  conception  of  a  progressive  scheme 
and  Tightness  which  we  have  taken  as  our  basis  of 
belief.  As  I  have  already  confessed,  the  Scheme 
of  Salvation,  the  idea  of  a  process  of  sorrow  and 
atonement  presents  itself  to  me  as  adequately 
true.  So  far  I  do  not  think  the  new  faith  breaks 
with  the  old.  But  it  follows  as  a  natural  con- 
sequence of  our  metaphysical  preliminaries  that 

112 


Of  Belief  113 

I  should  find  the  Christian  theology  Aristotelian, 
over-defined  and  excessively  personified.  The 
painted  figure  of  that  bearded  ancient  upon  the 
Sistine  Chapel  or  William  Blake's  wild-haired, 
wild-eyed  Trinity,  convey  no  nearer  sense  of  God 
to  me  than  some  pearl-eyed  carven  monster  from 
the  worship  of  the  South  Sea  Islands.  And  the 
whole  story  Milton  has  rehearsed,  the  whole  fable 
of  the  offended  creator  and  the  sacrificial  son, 
it  cannot  span  the  circle  of  my  ideas,  it  is  a  little 
thing  and  none  the  less  little  because  it  is  inti- 
mate, flesh  of  my  flesh  and  spirit  of  my  spirit, 
like  the  drawings  of  my  little  boy.  I  put  it  aside 
as  I  would  put  aside  the  gay  figure  of  a  costumed 
officiating  priest.  The  passage  of  time  has  made 
his  canonicals  too  strange,  too  unlike  the  world  of 
common  thought  and  costume.  These  things 
helped,  but  now  they  hinder  and  disturb.  I 
cannot  bring  myself  back  to  them.     .     .     . 

But  the  psychological  experience  and  the 
theology  of  Christianity  are  only  a  ground-work 
for  its  essential  feature,  which  is  the  conception 
of  a  relationship  of  the  individual  believer  to  a 
mystical  being  at  once  human  and  divine,  the 
Risen  Christ.  This  being  presents  itself  to  the 
modern  consciousness  as  a  familiar  and  beautiful 
figure,   associated  with  a  series  of  sayings  and 


ii4  First  and  Last  Things 

incidents  that  coalesce  with  a  very  distinct  and 
rounded-off  and  complete  effect  of  personality. 
After  we  have  cleared  off  all  the  definitions  of 
theology,  He  remains,  mystically  suffering  for 
humanity,  mystically  asserting  that  love  in  pain 
and  sacrifice  in  service  are  the  necessary  substance 
of  Salvation.  Whether  he  actually  existed  as  a 
finite  individual  person  in  the  opening  of  the 
Christian  era  seems  to  me  a  question  entirely 
beside  the  mark.  The  evidence  at  this  distance 
is  of  imperceptible  force,  for  or  against.  The 
Christ  we  know  is  quite  evidently  something 
different  from  any  finite  person,  a  figure,  a  con- 
ception, a  synthesis  of  emotions,  experiences  and 
inspirations,  sustained  by  and  sustaining  millions 
of  human  souls. 

Now  it  seems  to  be  the  common  teaching  of 
almost  all  Christians,  that  Salvation,  that  is  to 
say  the  consolidation  and  amplification  of  one's 
motives  through  the  conception  of  a  general 
scheme  or  purpose,  is  to  be  attained  through  the 
personality  of  Christ.  Christ  is  made  cardinal 
to  the  act  of  Faith.  The  act  of  Faith,  they  assert, 
is  not  simply  as  I  hold  it  to  be,  belief,  but  belief 
in  Him. 

We  are  dealing  here,  be  it  remembered,  with 
beliefs    deliberately    undertaken    and    not    with 


Of  Belief  115 

questions  of  fact.  The  only  matters  of  fact 
material  here  are  facts  of  experience.  If  in  your 
experience  Salvation  is  attainable  through  Christ, 
then  certainly  Christianity  is  true  for  you.  And 
if  a  Christian  asserts  that  my  belief  is  a  false  light 
and  that  presently  I  shall  "come  to  Christ,"  I 
cannot  disprove  his  assertion,  I  can  but  disbelieve 
it.     I  hesitate  even  to  make  the  obvious  retort. 

I  hope  I  shall  offend  no  susceptibilities  when  I 
assert  that  this  great  and  very  definite  personality 
in  the  hearts  and  imaginations  of  mankind  does 
not  and  never  has  attracted  me.  It  is  a  fact  I 
record  about  myself  without  aggression  or  regret. 
I  do  not  find  myself  able  to  associate  Him  in  any 
way  with  the  emotion  of  Salvation. 

I  admit  the  splendid  imaginative  appeal  in  the 
idea  of  a  divine-human  friend  and  mediator.  If 
it  were  possible  to  have  access  by  prayer,  by 
meditation,  by  urgent  outcries  of  the  soul,  to 
such  a  being  whose  feet  were  in  the  darknesses, 
who  stooped  down  from  the  light,  who  at  once  was 
great  and  little,  limitless  in  power  and  virtue  and 
one's  very  brother;  if  it  were  possible  by  sheer  will 
in  believing  to  make  such  a  helper  and  to  make 
one's  way  to  him,  who  would  refuse  such  help? 
But  I  do  not  find  such  a  being  in  Christ.  I  do 
not  find,  I  cannot  imagine,  such  a  being.     I  wish 


n6  First  and  Last  Things 

I  could.  To  me  the  Christian  Christ  seems  not 
so  much  a  humanised  God  as  an  incomprehensibly 
sinless  Being  neither  God  nor  man.  His  sinless- 
ness  wears  his  incarnation  like  a  fancy  dress, 
all  his  white  self  unchanged.  He  had  no  petty 
weaknesses. 

Now  the  essential  trouble  of  my  life  is  its  petty 
weaknesses.  If  I  am  to  have  that  love,  that 
sense  of  understanding  fellowship,  which  is,  I 
conceive,  the  peculiar  magic  and  merit  of  this 
idea  of  a  personal  Saviour,  then  I  need  someone 
quite  other  than  this  image  of  virtue,  this  terrible 
and  incomprehensible  Galilean  with  his  crown  of 
thorns,  his  blood-stained  hands  and  feet.  I 
cannot  love  him  any  more  than  I  can  love  a  man 
upon  the  rack.  Even  in  the  face  of  torments  I 
do  not  think  I  should  feel  a  need  for  him.  I  had 
rather  then  a  hundred  times  have  Botticelli's 
armed  angel  in  his  Tobit  at  Florence.  (I  hope 
I  do  not  seem  to  want  to  shock  in  writing  these 
things,  but  indeed  my  only  aim  is  to  lay  my 
feelings  bare.)  I  know  what  love  for  an  idealised 
person  can  be.  It  happens  that  in  my  younger 
days  I  found  a  character  in  the  history  of  litera- 
ture that  had  a  singular  and  extraordinary  charm 
for  me,  of  whom  the  thought  was  tender  and 
comforting,    who    indeed    helped    me     through 


Of  Belief  117 

shames  and  humiliations  as  though  he  held  my 
hand.  This  person  was  Oliver  Goldsmith.  His 
blunders  and  troubles,  his  vices  and  vanities, 
seized  and  still  hold  my  imagination.  The 
slights  of  Boswell,  the  contempt  of  Gibbon  and 
all  his  company  save  Johnson,  the  exquisite 
fineness  of  spirit  in  his  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  and 
that  green  suit  of  his  and  the  doctor's  cane  and 
the  love  despised,  these  things  together  make  him 
a  congenial  saint  and  hero  for  me,  so  that  I 
thought  of  him  as  others  pray.  When  I  think 
of  that  youthful  feeling  for  Goldsmith,  I  know 
what  I  need  in  a  personal  Saviour,  as  a  troglodyte 
who  has  seen  a  candle  can  imagine  the  sun.  But 
the  Christian  Christ  in  none  of  his  three  charac- 
teristic phases,  neither  as  the  magic  babe  (from 
whom  I  am  cut  off  by  the  wanton  and  indecent 
purity  of  the  Immaculate  Conception)  nor  as  the 
white-robed,  spotless  miracle  worker,  nor  as  the 
fierce  unreal  torment  of  the  cross,  comes  close 
to  my  soul.  I  do  not  understand  the  Agony  in 
the  Garden;  to  me  it  is  like  a  scene  from  a  play 
in  an  unknown  tongue.  The  last  cry  of  despair 
is  the  one  human  touch  discordant  with  all  the 
rest  of  the  story.  One  cry  of  despair  does  not 
suffice.  The  Christian's  Christ  is  too  fine  for 
me,  not  incarnate  enough,  not  flesh  enough,  not 


n8  First  and  Last  Things 

earth  enough  nor  failure  enough.  He  was  never 
foolish  and  hot-eared  and  inarticulate,  never  vain, 
he  never  forgot  things  nor  tangled  his  miracles. 
I  could  love  him  I  think  more  easily  if  the  dead 
had  not  risen  and  if  he  had  lain  in  peace  in  his 
sepulchre  instead  of  coming  back  more  enhaloed 
and  whiter  than  ever,  as  a  postscript  to  his  own 
tragedy. 

When  I  think  of  the  Resurrection  I  am  always 
reminded  of  the  "happy  endings"  that  editors 
and  actor  managers  are  accustomed  to  impose 
upon  essentially  tragic  novels  and  plays.     .     .     . 

You  see  how  I  stand  in  this  matter,  puzzled 
and  confused  by  the  Christian  presentation  of 
Christ.  I  know  there  are  many  will  answer — 
as  I  suppose  my  friend  the  Rev.  R.  J.  Campbell 
would  answer — that  what  confuses  me  is  the 
overlaying  of  the  personality  of  Jesus  by  stories 
and  superstitions  and  conflicting  symbols;  he  will 
in  effect  ask  me  to  disentangle  the  Christ  I  need 
from  the  accumulated  material,  choosing  and 
rejecting.  Perhaps  one  may  do  that.  He  does, 
I  know,  so  present  him  as  a  man  inspired  and 
strenuously,  inadequately  and  erringly  presenting 
a  dream  of  human  brotherhood  and  the  immediate 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  on  earth  and  so  blundering 
to  his  failure   and  death.     But  that  will  be  a 


Of  Belief  119 

recovered  and  restored  person  he  would  give  me, 
and  not  the  Christ  the  Christians  worship  and 
declare  they  love,  in  whom  they  find  their 
salvation. 

When  I  write  "declare  they  love"  I  throw 
doubt  intentionally  upon  the  universal  love  of 
Christians  for  their  Saviour.  I  have  watched 
men  and  nations  in  this  matter.  I  am  struck  by 
the  fact  that  so  many  Christians  fall  back  upon 
more  humanised  figures,  upon  the  tender  figure 
of  Mary,  upon  patron  saints  and  such  more  erring 
creatures,  for  the  effect  of  mediation  and  sym- 
pathy they  need.     .     .     . 

You  see  it  comes  to  this,  that  I  think  Christ- 
ianity has  been  true  and  is  for  countless  people 
practically  true,  but  that  it  is  not  true  now  for 
me  and  that  for  most  people  it  is  true  only  with 
modifications.  Every  believing  Christian  is,  I  am 
sure,  my  spiritual  brother,  but  if  systematically 
I  called  myself  a  Christian  I  feel  that  to  most  men 
I  should  imply  too  much  and  so  tell  a  lie. 


§  14- 

Of  Other  Religions. — In  the  same  manner, 
in  varying  degree,  I  hold  all  religions  to  be  in  a 
measure  true.  Least  comprehensible  to  me  are 
the  Indian  formulae  because  they  seem  to  stand 
not  on  common  experience  but  on  those  intel- 
lectual assumptions  my  metaphysical  analysis 
destroys.  Transmigration  of  souls  without  a  con- 
tinuing memory  is  to  my  mind  utter  foolishness, 
the  imagining  of  a  race  of  children.  The  ag- 
gression, discipline  and  submission  of  Mahometan- 
ism  is,  I  think,  an  intellectually  limited  but  fine 
and  honourable  religion — for  men.  Its  spirit  if 
not  its  formulae  is  abundantly  present  in  our 
modern  world.  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling,  for  example 
manifestly  preaches  a  Mahometan  God,  a  modern- 
ised God  with  a  taste  for  engineering.  I  have  no 
doubt  that,  in  devotion  to  a  virile,  almost  national 
Deity  and  to  the  service  of  His  Empire  of  stern 
Law  and  Order,  efficiently  upheld,  men  have 
found  and  will  find  Salvation. 

All  these  religions  are  true  for  me  as  Canterbury 
Cathedral  is  a  true  thing  and  as  a  Swiss  chalet  is 

120 


Of  Belief  121 

a  true  thing.  There  they  are  and  they  have 
served  a  purpose,  they  have  worked.  Men  and 
women  have  lived  in  and  by  them.  Men  and 
women  still  do.  Only  they  are  not  true  for  me 
to  live  in  them.  I  have,  I  believe,  to  live  in  a 
new  edifice  of  my  own  discovery.  They  do  not 
work  for  me. 

These  schemes  are  true,  and  also  these  schemes 
are  false!  in  the  sense  that  new  things,  new 
phrasings,  have  to  replace  them. 


5  15- 

Such  are  the  essential  beliefs  by  which  I  express 
myself.  But  now  comes  the  practical  outcome 
of  these  things,  and  that  is  to  discuss  and  show 
how  upon  this  metaphysical  basis  and  these  be- 
liefs, and  in  obedience  to  the  ruling  motive  that 
arises  with  them,  I  frame  principles  of  conduct. 


1*3 


Book  the  Third. 

Of  General  Conduct 


ii3 


1 1. 


Conduct  Follows  from  Belief. — I  hold  that 
the  broad  direction  of  Conduct  follows  necessa- 
rily from  Belief.  The  Believer  does  not  require 
rewards  and  punishments  to  direct  him  to  the 
Right.  Motive  and  idea  are  not  so  separable. 
To  Believe  truly  is  to  want  to  do  Right.  To  get 
Salvation  is  to  be  unified  by  a  comprehending 
idea  of  a  purpose  and  by  a  ruling  motive. 

The  Believer  wants  to  do  right,  he  naturally 
and  necessarily  seeks  to  do  right.  If  he  fails  to 
do  right,  if  he  finds  he  has  done  wrong  instead  of 
right,  he  is  not  greatly  distressed  or  terrified,  he 
naturally  and  cheerfully  does  his  best  to  correct 
his  error.  He  can  be  damned  only  by  the  fading 
and  loss  of  his  belief.  And  naturally  he  recurs 
to  and  refreshes  his  belief. 

I  write  in  phrases  that  the  evangelical  Christ- 
ianity of  my  childhood  made  familiar  to  me,  be- 
cause they  are  the  most  expressive  phrases  I  have 
ever  met  for  the  psychological  facts  with  which 
I  am  dealing. 

But  faith,  though  it  banishes  fear  and  despair 

125 


126  First  and  Last  Things 

and  brings  with  it  a  real  prevailing  desire  to  know 
and  do  the  Good  does  not  in  itself  determine  what 
is  the  Good  or  supply  any  simple  guide  to  the 
choice  between  alternatives.  If  it  did,  there 
would  be  nothing  more  to  be  said,  a  book  upon 
Conduct  would  be  unnecessary. 


J  a. 


What  is  Good? — It  seems  to  me  one  of  the 
heedless  errors  of  those  who  deal  in  philosophy, 
to  suppose  all  things  that  have  simple  names  or 
unified  effects  are  in  their  nature  simple  and  may 
be  discovered  and  isolated  as  a  sort  of  essence  by 
analysis.  It  is  natural  to  suppose — and  I  think 
it  is  also  quite  wrong  to  suppose — that  such  things 
as  Good  and  Beauty  can  be  abstracted  from  good 
and  beautiful  things  and  considered  alone.  But 
pure  Good  and  pure  Beauty  are  to  me  empty 
terms.  It  seems  to  me  that  these  are  in  their 
nature  synthetic  things,  that  they  arise  out  of  the 
coming  together  of  contributory  things  and  con- 
ditions, and  vanish  at  their  dispersal;  they  are 
synthetic  just  as  more  obviously  Harmony  is 
synthetic.  It  is  consequently  not  possible  to 
give  a  definition  of  Good,  just  as  it  is  not  possible 
to  give  a  definition  of  that  other  something  which 
is  so  closely  akin  to  it,  Beauty.  Nor  is  it  to  be 
maintained  that  what  is  Good  for  one  is  Good 
for  another.     But  what  is  Good  of  one's  general 

relations  and  what  is  right  in  action   must  be 

127 


128  First  and  Last  Things 

determined  by  the  nature  of  one's  Beliefs  about 
the  purpose  in  things.  I  have  set  down  my  broad 
impression  of  that  purpose  in  respect  to  me,  as 
the  awakening  and  development  of  the  conscious- 
ness and  will  of  our  species,  and  I  have  confessed 
my  belief  that  in  subordinating  myself  and  all 
my  motives  to  that  idea  lies  my  Salvation.  It 
follows  from  that,  that  the  good  life  is  the  life 
that  most  richly  gathers  and  winnows  and  pre- 
pares experience  and  renders  it  available  for  the 
race,  that  contributes  most  effectively  to  the 
collective  growth. 

This  is  in  general  terms  my  idea  of  Good.  So 
soon  as  one  passes  from  general  terms  to  the 
question  of  individual  good,  one  encounters  in- 
dividuality; for  everyone  in  the  differing  quality 
and  measure  of  their  personality  and  powers  and 
possibilities,  good  and  right  must  be  different.  We 
are  all  engaged,  each  contributing  from  his  or  her 
own  standpoint,  in  the  collective  synthesis ;  what- 
ever one  can  best  do,  one  must  do  that,  in  what- 
ever manner  one  can  best  help  the  synthesis,  one 
must  exert  oneself;  the  setting  apart  of  oneself, 
secrecy,  the  service  of  secret  and  personal  ends, 
is  the  waste  of  life  and  the  essential  quality  of  Sin. 

That  is  the  general  expression  for  right  living 
as  I  conceive  it. 


§3- 


Socialism. — In  the  study  of  what  is  Good,  it 
is  very  convenient  to  make  a  rough  division  of  our 
subject  into  general  and  particular.  There  are 
first  the  interests  and  problems  that  affect  us  all 
collectively,  in  which  we  have  a  common  concern 
and  from  which  no  one  may  legitimately  seek 
exemption;  of  these  interests  and  problems  we 
may  fairly  say  every  man  should  do  so  and  so 
or  so  and  so,  or  the  law  should  be  so  and  so,  or  so 
and  so;  and  secondly  there  are  those  other  pro- 
blems in  which  individual  difference  and  the  inter- 
play of  one  or  two  individualities  is  predominant. 
This  is  of  course  no  hard  and  fast  classification, 
but  it  gives  a  method  of  approach.  We  can 
begin  with  the  generalised  person  in  ourselves 
and  end  with  individuality. 

In  the  world  of  ideas  about  me,  I  have  found 

going  on  a  great  social  and  political  movement 

that  correlates  itself  with  my  conception  of  a  great 

synthesis  of  human  purpose  as  the  aspect  towards 

us  of  the  universal  scheme.     This  movement  is 

Socialism.     Socialism  is  to  me  no  clear-cut  system 
9  129 


130  First  and  Last  Things 

of  theories  and  dogmas;  it  is  one  of  those  solid 
and  extensive  and  synthetic  ideas  that  are  better 
indicated  by  a  number  of  different  formulae  than 
by  one,  just  as  one  only  realises  a  statue  by 
walking  round  it  and  seeing  it  from  a  number 
of  points  of  view.  I  do  not  think  it  is  to  be 
completely  expressed  by  any  one  system  of 
formulae  or  by  any  one  man.  Its  common 
quality  from  nearly  every  point  of  view  is  the 
subordination  of  the  will  of  the  self-seeking  indi- 
vidual to  the  idea  of  a  racial  well-being  embodied 
in  an  organised  state,  organised  for  every  end 
that  can  be  obtained  collectively.  Upon  that  I 
seize ;  that  is  the  value  of  Socialism  for  me. 

Socialism  for  me  is  a  common  step  we  are  all 
taking  in  the  great  synthesis  of  human  purpose. 
It  is  the  organisation,  in  regard  to  a  great  mass 
of  common  and  fundamental  interests,  that  have 
hitherto  been  dispersedly  served,  of  a  collective 
purpose. 

I  see  humanity  scattered  over  the  world,  dis- 
persed, conflicting,  unawakened.  ...  I  see 
human  life  as  avoidable  waste  and  curable  con- 
fusion. I  see  peasants  living  in  wretched  huts 
knee-deep  in  manure,  mere  parasites  on  their 
own  pigs  and  cows;  I  see  shy  hunters  wandering 
in  primeval  forests ;  I  see  the  grimy  millions  who 


Of  General  Conduct  131 

slave  for  industrial  production;  I  see  some  who 
are  extravagant  and  yet  contemptible  creatures 
of  luxury,  and  some  leading  lives  of  shame  and 
indignity,  tens  of  thousands  of  wealthy  people 
wasting  lives  in  vulgar  and  unsatisfying  triviali- 
ties, hundreds  of  thousands  meanly  chaffering 
themselves,  rich  or  poor,  in  the  wasteful  byways 
of  trade;  I  see  gamblers,  fools,  brutes,  toilers, 
martyrs.  Their  disorder  of  effort,  the  spectacle 
of  futility  fills  me  with  a  passionate  desire  to  end 
waste,  to  create  order,  to  develop  understanding. 
.  .  .  All  these  people  reflect  and  are  part  of 
the  waste  and  discontent  of  my  life,  and  this  co- 
ordinating of  the  species  in  a  common  general  end, 
and  the  effort  of  my  personal  salvation  are  the 
social  and  the  individual  aspect  of  essentially 
the  same  desire.     .     .     . 

And  yet  dispersed  as  all  these  people  are,  they 
are  yet  far  more  closely  drawn  together  to  common 
ends  and  a  common  effort  than  the  filthy  savages 
who  ate  food  rotten  and  uncooked  in  the  age  of 
unpolished  stone.  They  live  in  the  mere  opening 
phase  of  a  synthesis  of  effort  the  end  of  which  sur- 
passes our  imagination.  Such  intercourse  and 
community  as  they  have  is  only  a  dawn.  We  look 
towards  the  day,  the  day  of  the  organised  civilised 
world  state.     The  first  clear  intimation  of  that 


132  First  and  Last  Things 

conscious  synthesis  of  human  thought  to  which  I 
look,  the  first  edge  of  the  dayspring  has  arisen — 
as  Socialism,  as  I  conceive  of  Socialism.  Socialism 
is  to  me  no  more  and  no  less  than  the  awakening 
of  a  collective  consciousness  in  humanity,  a  collec- 
tive will  and  a  collective  mind  out  of  which  finer 
individualities  may  arise  forever  in  a  perpetual 
series  of  fresh  endeavours  and  fresh  achievements 
for  the  race. 


§4- 


A  Criticism  of  Certain  Forms  of  Socialism. — 
It  is  necessary  to  point  out  that  a  Socialism  arising 
in  this  way  out  of  the  conception  of  a  synthesis 
of  the  will  and  thought  of  the  species  will  neces- 
sarily differ  from  conceptions  of  Socialism  arrived 
at  in  other  and  different  ways.  It  is  based  on  a 
self-discontent  and  self-abnegation  and  not  on 
self-satisfaction,  and  it  will  be  a  scheme  of  per- 
sistent thought  and  construction,  essentially,  and 
it  will  support  this  or  that  method  of  law-making, 
or  this  or  that  method  of  economic  exploitation 
or  this  or  that  matter  of  social  grouping,  only 
incidentally  and  in  relation  to  that. 

Such  a  conception  of  Socialism  is  very  remote 
in  spirit,  however  it  may  agree  in  method,  from 
that  philanthropic  administrative  socialism  one 
finds  among  the  British  ruling  and  administrative 
class.  That  seems  to  me  to  be  based  on  a  pity 
which  is  largely  unjustifiable  and  a  pride  that  is 
altogether  unintelligent.  The  pity  is  for  the  ob- 
vious wants  and  distresses  of  poverty,  the  pride 

appears  in  the  arrogant  and  aggressive  conception 

133 


134  First  and  Last  Things 

of  raising  one's  fellows.  I  have  no  strong  feeling 
for  the  horrors  and  discomforts  of  poverty  as  such  5 
sensibilities  can  be  hardened  to  endure  the  life 
led  by  the  Romans  in  Dartmoor  jail  a  hundred 
years  ago,1  or  softened  to  detect  the  crumpled 
roseleaf;  what  disgusts  me  is  the  stupidity  and 
warring  purposes  of  which  poverty  is  the  outcome. 
When  it  comes  to  this  idea  of  raising  human 
beings,  I  must  confess  the  only  person  I  feel  con- 
cerned about  raising  is  H.  G.  Wells,  and  that 
even  in  his  case  my  energies  might  be  better 
employed.  After  all,  presently  he  must  die  and 
the  world  will  have  done  with  him.  His  output 
for  the  species  is  more  important  than  his  moral 
elevation. 

Moreover  all  this  talk  of  raising  implies  a  classi- 
fication I  doubt.  I  find  it  hard  to  fix  any  stand- 
ards that  will  determine  who  is  above  me  and 
who  below.  Most  people  are  different  from  me 
I  perceive,  but  which  among  them  is  better,  which 
worse  ?  I  have  a  certain  power  of  communicating 
with  other  minds,  but  what  experiences  I  com- 
municate seem  often  far  thinner  and  poorer  stuff 
than  those  which  others  less  expressive  than  I 
half  fail  to  communicate  and  half  display  to  me. 

1  See  The  Story  of  Dartmoor  Prison,  by  Basil  Thomson. 
Heinemann,  1907. 


Of  General  Conduct  135 

My  "inferiors,"  judged  by  the  common  social 
standards  seem  indeed  intellectually  more  limited 
than  I  and  with  a  narrower  outlook,  they  are 
often  dirtier  and  more  driven,  more  under  the 
stress  of  hunger  and  animal  appetites ;  but  on  the 
other  hand  have  they  not  more  vigorous  sensa- 
tions than  I,  and  through  sheer  coarsening  and 
hardening  of  fibre,  the  power  to  do  more  toilsome 
things  and  sustain  intenser  sensations  than  I 
could  endure?  When  I  sit  upon  the  bench,  a 
respectable  magistrate,  and  commit  some  bat- 
tered reprobate  for  trial  for  this  lurid  offence  or 
that,  or  send  him  or  her  to  prison  for  drunkenness 
or  such-like  indecorum,  the  doubt  drifts  into  my 
mind  which  of  us  after  all  is  indeed  getting  near- 
est to  the  keen  edge  of  life.  Are  I  and  my  re- 
spectable colleagues  much  more  than  successful 
evasions  of  that?  Perhaps  these  people  in  the  dark 
know  more  of  the  essential  strains  and  stresses 
of  nature,  being  more  intimate  with  pain.  At 
any  rate  I  do  not  think  I  am  justified  in  saying 
certainly  that  they  do  not  know.     .     .     . 

No,  I  do  not  want  to  raise  people,  using  my 
own  position  as  a  standard,  I  do  not  want  to  be 
one  of  a  gang  of  consciously  superior  people,  I  do 
not  want  arrogantly  to  change  the  quality  of  other 
lives.    I  do  not  want  to  interfere  with  other  lives, 


136  First  and  Last  Things 

except  incidentally — incidentally,  in  this  way  that  I 
do  want  to  get  to  an  understanding  with  them,  I 
do  want  to  share  and  feel  with  them  in  our  com- 
merce with  the  collective  mind.  I  suppose  I  do 
not  stretch  language  very  much  when  I  say  I 
want  to  get  rid  of  stresses  and  obstacles  between 
our  minds  and  personalities  and  to  establish  a 
relation  that  is  understanding  and  sympathy. 

I  want  to  make  more  generally  possible  a  rela- 
tionship of  communication  and  interchange  that 
for  want  of  a  less  battered  and  ambiguous  word,  I 
must  needs  call  love. 

And  if  I  disavow  the  Socialism  of  condescension, 
so  also  do  I  disavow  the  Socialism  of  revolt. 
There  is  a  form  of  socialism  based  upon  the  eco- 
nomic generalisations  of  Marx,  an  economic  fatal- 
istic Socialism  that  I  hold  to  be  rather  wrong  in  its 
vision  of  facts,  rather  more  distinctly  wrong  in 
its  theory,  and  altogether  wrong  and  hopeless  in 
its  spirit.  It  preaches  as  inevitable  a  concentra- 
tion of  property  in  the  hands  of  a  limited  number 
of  property  owners  and  the  expropriation  of  the 
great  proletarian  mass  of  mankind,  a  concentration 
which  is  after  all  no  more  than  a  tendency  condi- 
tional on  changing  and  changeable  conventions 
about  property,  and  it  finds  its  hope  of  a  better 
future  in  the  outcome  of  a  class  conflict  between 


Of  General  Conduct  137 

the  expropriated  Many  and  the  expropriating  Few. 
Both  sides  are  to  be  equally  swayed  by  self- 
interest,  but  the  toilers  are  to  be  gregarious  and 
mutually  loyal  in  their  self-interest — Heaven 
knows  why,  except  that  otherwise  the  Marxist 
dream  will  not  work.  The  experience  of  con- 
temporary events  seems  to  show  at  least  an  equal 
power  of  combination  for  material  ends  among 
owners  and  employers  as  among  workers. 

Now  this  class-war  idea  is  one  diametrically 
opposed  to  that  religious-spirited  Socialism  which 
supplied  the  form  of  my  general  activities. 

The  class-war  idea  would  exacerbate  the  an- 
tagonism of  the  interests  of  the  Many  individuals 
against  the  Few  individuals,  and  I  would  oppose 
the  conception  of  the  Whole  to  the  self-seeking 
of  the  Individual.  The  spirit  and  constructive 
intention  of  the  Many  to-day  are  no  better  than 
those  of  the  Few ;  poor  and  rich  alike  are  over- 
individualised,  self-seeking  and  non-creative;  to 
organise  the  confused  jostling  competitions,  over- 
reachings,  envies  and  hatreds  of  to-day  into  two 
great  class-hatreds  and  antagonisms  will  advance 
the  reign  of  love  at  most  only  a  very  little,  only 
so  far  as  it  will  simplify  and  make  plain  certain 
issues.  It  may  very  possibly  not  advance  the 
reign  of  love  at  all,  but  rather  shatter  the  order 


138  First  and  Last  Things 

we  have.  Socialism,  as  I  conceive  it,  and  as  I 
have  presented  it  in  my  book,  New  Worlds  for 
Old,  seeks  to  change  economic  arrangements  only 
by  the  way,  as  an  aspect  and  outcome  of  a  great 
change,  a  change  in  the  spirit  and  method  of 
human  intercourse. 

I  know  that  here  I  go  beyond  the  limits  many 
Socialists  in  the  past,  and  some  who  are  still 
contemporary,  have  set  for  themselves.  Much 
Socialism  to-day  seems  to  think  of  itself  as  fighting 
a  battle  against  poverty  and  its  concomitants 
alone.  Now  poverty  is  only  a  symptom  of  a 
profounder  evil  and  is  never  to  be  cured  by  itself. 
It  is  one  aspect  of  divided  and  dispersed  purposes. 
If  Socialism  is  only  a  conflict  with  poverty, 
Socialism  is  nothing.  But  I  hold  that  Socialism 
is  and  must  be  a  battle  against  human  stupidity 
and  egotism  and  disorder,  a  battle  fought  all 
through  the  forests  and  jungles  of  the  soul  of  man. 
As  we  get  intellectual  and  moral  light  and  the 
realisation  of  brotherhood,  so  social  and  economic 
organisation  will  develop.  But  the  Socialist  may 
attack  poverty  for  ever,  disregarding  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  factors  that  necessitate  it,  and 
he  will  remain  until  the  end  a  purely  economic 
doctrinaire  crying  in  the  wilderness  in  vain. 

And  if  I  antagonise  myself  in  this  way  to  the 


Of  General  Conduct  139 

philanthropic  Socialism  of  the  kindly  prosperous 
people  on  the  one  hand  and  to  the  fierce  class 
hatred  Socialism  of  the  other,  still  more  am  I 
opposed  to  that  furtive  Socialism  of  the  specialist 
which  one  meets  most  typically  in  the  Fabian 
Society.  It  arises  very  naturally  out  of  what  I 
may  perhaps  call  specialist  fatigue  and  impatience. 
It  is  very  easy  for  writers  like  myself  to  deal  in 
the  broad  generalities  of  Socialism  and  urge  their 
adoption  as  general  principles;  it  is  altogether 
another  affair  with  a  man  who  sets  himself  to 
work  out  the  riddle  of  the  complications  of 
actuality  in  order  to  modify  them  in  the  direction 
of  Socialism.  He  finds  himself  in  a  jungle  of 
difficulties  that  demand  his  intellectual  power  to 
the  utmost.  He  emerges  at  last  with  conclusions, 
and  they  are  rarely  the  obvious  conclusions,  as 
to  what  needs  to  be  done.  Even  the  people  of 
his  own  side  he  finds  do  not  see  as  he  sees;  they 
are,  he  perceives,  crude  and  ignorant.  Now  I 
hold  that  his  duty  is  to  explain  his  discoveries 
and  intentions  until  they  see  as  he  sees.  But  the 
specialist  temperament  is  often  not  a  generalis- 
ing and  expository  temperament.  Specialists  are 
apt  to  measure  minds  by  their  specialty  and 
underrate  the  average  intelligence.  The  specialist 
is  appalled  by  the  real  task  before  him  and  he  sets 


140  First  and  Last  Things 

himself  by  tricks  and  misrepresentations,  by  be- 
nevolent scoundrelism  in  fact,  to  effect  changes 
he  desires.  Too  often  he  fails  even  in  that. 
Where  he  might  have  found  fellowship  he  arouses 
suspicion.  And  even  if  a  thing  is  done  in  this 
way,  its  essential  merit  is  lost.  For  it  is  better, 
I  hold,  for  a  man  to  die  of  his  diseases  than  to  be 
cured  unwittingly.  That  is  to  cheat  him  of  life, 
and  to  cheat  life  of  the  contribution  his  conscious- 
ness might  have  given  it. 

The  Socialism  of  my  belief  rests  on  a  profounder 
faith  and  a  broader  proposition.  It  looks  over 
and  beyond  the  warring  purposes  of  to-day  as  a 
general  may  look  over  and  beyond  a  crowd  of 
sullen,  excited  and  confused  recruits,  to  the  day 
when  they  will  be  disciplined,  exercised,  trained, 
willing  and  convergent  on  a  common  end.  It 
holds  persistently  to  the  idea  of  men  increasingly 
working  in  agreement,  doing  things  that  are  sane 
to  do,  on  a  basis  of  mutual  helpfulness,  temperance 
and  toleration.  It  sees  the  great  masses  of  hu- 
manity rising  out  of  base  and  immediate  anxieties, 
out  of  dwarfing  pressures  and  cramped  surround- 
ings, to  understanding  and  participation  and  fine 
effort.  It  sees  the  resources  of  the  earth  hus- 
banded and  harvested,  economised  and  used  with 
scientific  skill  for  the  maximum  of  result.     It 


Of  General  Conduct  141 

sees  towns  and  cities  finely  built,  a  race  of  beings 
finely  bred  and  taught  and  trained,  open  ways 
and  peace  and  freedom  from  end  to  end  of  the 
earth.  It  sees  beauty  increasing  in  humanity, 
about  humanity  and  through  humanity.  Through 
this  great  body  of  mankind  goes  evermore  an  in- 
creasing understanding,  an  intensifying  brother- 
hood. As  Christians  have  dreamt  of  the  New 
Jerusalem  so  does  Socialism,  growing  ever  more 
temperate,  patient,  forgiving  and  resolute,  set 
its  face  to  the  World  City  of  Mankind. 


§4- 


Hate  and  Love. — Before  I  go  on  to  point  out 
the  broad  principles  of  action  that  flow  from  this 
wide  conception  of  Socialism,  I  may  perhaps  give 
a  section  to  elucidating  that  opposition  of  hate 
and  love  I  made  when  I  dealt  with  the  class  war. 
I  have  already  used  the  word  love  several  times; 
it  is  an  ambiguous  word  and  it  may  be  well  to 
spend  a  few  words  in  making  clear  the  sense  in 
which  it  is  used  here.  I  use  it  in  a  very  broad 
sense  to  convey  all  that  complex  of  motives,  im- 
pulses, sentiments,  that  incline  us  to  find  our 
happiness  and  satisfactions  in  the  happiness  and 
sympathy  of  others.  Essentially  it  is  a  synthetic 
force  in  human  affairs,  the  merger  tendency,  a 
linking  force,  an  expression  in  personal  will  and 
feeling  of  the  common  element  and  interest.  It 
insists  upon  resemblances  and  shares  and  sym- 
pathies. And  hate,  I  take  it,  is  the  emotional 
aspect  of  antagonism,  it  is  the  expression  in  per- 
sonal will  and  feeling  of  the  individual's  sepa- 
ration   from    others.      It    is   the  competing  and 

destructive  tendency.  So  long  as  we  are  individu- 

142 


Of  General  Conduct  143 

als  and  members  of  a  species,  we  must  needs  both 
hate  and  love.  But  because  I  believe,  as  I  have 
already  confessed,  that  the  oneness  of  the  species 
is  a  greater  fact  than  individuality,  and  that  we 
individuals  are  temporary  separations  from  a 
collective  purpose,  and  since  hate  eliminates  itself 
by  eliminating  its  objects,  whilst  love  multiplies 
itself  by  multiplying  its  objects,  so  love  must  be 
a  thing  more  comprehensive  and  enduring  than 
hate. 

Moreover  hate  must  be  in  its  nature  a  good 
thing.  We  individuals  exist  as  such,  I  believe, 
for  the  Purpose  in  things,  and  our  separations 
and  antagonisms  serve  that  Purpose.  We  play 
against  each  other  like  hammer  and  anvil.  But 
the  synthesis  of  a  collective  will  in  humanity 
which  is  I  believe  our  human  and  terrestrial  share 
in  that  Purpose,  is  an  idea  that  carries  with  it  a 
conception  of  a  secular  alteration  in  the  scope 
and  method  of  both  love  and  hate.  Both  widen 
and  change  with  man's  widening  and  developing 
apprehension  of  the  Purpose  he  serves.  The 
savage  man  loves  in  gusts  a  fellow-creature  or  so 
about  him,  and  fears  and  hates  all  other  people. 
Every  expansion  of  his  scope  and  ideas  widens 
either  circle.  The  common  man  of  our  civilised 
world  loves  not  only  many  of  his  friends  and 


i44  First  and  Last  Things 

associates  systematically  and  enduringly,  but 
dimly  he  loves  also  his  city  and  his  country,  his 
creed  and  his  race;  he  loves  it  may  be  less  in- 
tensely but  over  a  far  wider  field  and  much  more 
steadily.  But  he  hates  also  more  widely  if  less 
passionately  and  vehemently  than  a  savage,  and 
since  love  makes  rather  harmony  and  peace  and 
hate  rather  conflict  and  events,  one  may  easily 
be  led  to  suppose  that  hate  is  the  ruling  motive  in 
human  affairs.  Men  band  themselves  together 
in  leagues  and  loyalties,  in  cults  and  organisations 
and  nationalities,  and  it  is  often  hard  to  say 
whether  the  bond  is  one  of  love  for  the  association 
or  hatred  of  those  to  whom  the  association  is 
antagonised.  The  two  things  pass  insensibly 
into  one  another.  London  people  have  recently 
seen  an  edifying  instance  of  the  transition,  in  the 
Brown  Dog  statue  riots.  A  number  of  people 
drawn  together  by  their  common  pity  for  animal 
suffering,  by  love  indeed  of  the  most  disinterested 
sort,  had  so  forgotten  their  initial  spirit  as  to 
erect  a  monument  with  an  inscription  at  once 
recklessly  untruthful,  spiteful  in  spirit  and  par- 
ticularly vexatious  to  one  great  medical  school  of 
London.  They  have  provoked  riots  and  pla- 
carded London  with  taunts  and  irritating  mis- 
representation of  the  spirit  of  medical  research, 


Of  General  Conduct  145 

and  they  have  infected  a  whole  fresh  generation 
of  London  students  with  a  bitter  partisan  con- 
tempt for  the  humanitarian  effort  that  has  so 
lamentably  misconducted  itself.  Both  sides  vow 
they  will  never  give  in,  and  the  anti-vivisectionists 
are  busy  manufacturing  small  china  copies  of  the 
Brown  Dog  figure,  inscription  and  all,  for  purposes 
of  domestic  irritation.  Here  hate,  the  evil  ugly 
brother  of  effort,  has  manifestly  slain  love  the 
initiator  and  taken  the  affair  in  hand.  That  is  a 
little  model  of  human  conflicts.  So  soon  as  we 
become  militant  and  play  against  one  another, 
comes  this  danger  of  strain  and  this  possible 
reversal  of  motive.  The  fight  begins.  Into  a  pit 
of  heat  and  hate  fall  right  and  wrong  together. 
Now  it  seems  to  me  that  a  religious  faith  such 
as  I  have  set  forth  in  the  second  Book,  and  a  clear 
sense  of  our  community  of  blood  with  all  man- 
kind, must  necessarily  affect  both  our  loving  and 
our  hatred.  It  will  certainly  not  abolish  hate, 
but  it  will  subordinate  it  altogether  to  love.  We 
are  individuals,  so  the  Purpose  presents  itself  to 
me,  in  order  that  we  may  hate  the  things  that 
have  to  go,  ugliness,  baseness,  insufficiency,  un- 
reality, that  we  may  love  and  experiment  and 
strive  for  the  things  that  collectively  we  seek — ■ 

power  and   beauty.     Before   our  conversion   wc 
10 


146  First  and  Last  Things 

did  this  darkly  and  with  our  hate  spreading  to 
persons  and  parties  from  the  things  for  which 
they  stood.  But  the  believer  will  hate  lovingly 
and  without  fear.  We  are  of  one  blood  and  sub- 
stance with  our  antagonists,  even  with  those  that 
we  desire  keenly  may  die  and  leave  no  issue  in 
flesh  or  persuasion.  They  all  touch  us  and  are 
part  of  one  necessary  experience.  They  are  all 
necessary  to  the  synthesis,  even  if  they  are  neces- 
sary only  as  the  potato-peel  in  the  dust-bin  is 
necessary  to  my  dinner. 

So  it  is  I  disavow  and  deplore  the  whole  spirit 
of  class-war  Socialism  with  its  doctrine  of  hate, 
its  envious  assault  upon  the  leisure  and  freedom 
of  the  wealthy.  Without  leisure  and  freedom 
and  the  experience  of  life  they  gave,  the  ideas 
of  Socialism  could  never  have  been  born.  The 
true  mission  of  Socialism  is  against  darkness, 
vanity  and  cowardice;  that  darkness  which 
hides  from  the  property  owner  the  intense 
beauty,  the  potentialities  of  interest,  the  splen- 
did possibilities  of  life ;  that  vanity  and  coward- 
ice that  makes  him  clutch  his  precious  holdings 
and  fear  and  hate  the  shadow  of  change.  It 
has  to  teach  the  collective  organisation  of 
society;  and  to  that  the  class-consciousness 
and  intense  class-prejudices  of  the  worker  need 


Of  General  Conduct  147 

to  bow  quite  as  much  as  those  of  the  property 
owner. 

But  when  I  say  that  Socialism's  mission  is  to 
teach,  I  do  not  mean  that  its  mission  is  a  merely 
verbal  and  mental  one ;  it  must  use  all  instruments 
and  teach  by  example  as  well  as  precept.  So- 
cialism by  becoming  charitable  and  merciful  will 
not  cease  to  be  militant.  Socialism  must,  lovingly 
but  resolutely,  use  law,  use  force,  to  dispossess 
the  owners  of  socially  disadvantageous  wealth, 
as  one  coerces  a  lunatic  brother  or  takes  a  wrong- 
fully acquired  toy  from  a  spoilt  and  obstinate 
child.  It  must  intervene  between  all  who  would 
keep  their  children  from  instruction  in  the  busi- 
ness of  citizenship  and  the  lessons  of  fraternity. 
It  must  build  and  guard  what  it  builds  with  laws 
and  with  that  sword  which  is  behind  all  laws. 
Non-resistance  is  for  the  non-constructive  man, 
for  the  hermit  in  the  cave  and  the  naked  saint 
in  the  dust;  the  builder  and  maker  with  the  first 
stroke  of  his  foundation  spade  uses  force  and 
opens  war  against  the  anti-builder. 


§5- 


The  Preliminary  Social  Duty. — The  belief 
I  have  that  contributing  to  the  development  of 
the  collective  being  of  man  is  the  individual's 
general  meaning  and  duty,  and  the  formulae  of 
the  Socialism  which  embodies  this  belief  so  far 
as  our  common  activities  go,  give  a  general  frame- 
work and  direction  how  a  man  or  woman  should 
live.  (I  do  throughout  all  this  book  mean  man 
or  woman  equally  when  I  write  of  "man,"  unless 
it  is  manifestly  inapplicable.) 

And  first  in  this  present  time  he  must  see  to 

it  that  he  does  live,  that  is  to  say  he  must  get 

food,  clothing,  covering,  an  adequate  leisure  for 

the  finer  aspects  of  living.     Socialism  plans  an 

organised  civilisation  in  which  these  things  will 

be    a    collective  solicitude,  and    the  gaining    of 

a   subsistence   an   easy   preliminary   to   the   fine 

drama  of  existence,  but  in  the  world  as  we  have 

it  we  are  forced  to  engage  much  of  our  energy  in 

scrambling  for  these  preliminary  necessities.     Our 

problems  of  conduct  lie  in  the  world  as  it  is  and 

not  in  the  world  as  we  want  it  to  be.     First  then 

148 


Of  General  Conduct  149 

a  man  must  get  a  living,  a  fair,  civilised  living  for 
himself.  It  is  a  fundamental  duty.  It  must  be  a 
fair  living,  not  pinched  nor  mean  nor  strained.  A 
man  can  do  nothing  higher,  he  can  be  of  no  service 
to  any  cause  until  he  himself  is  fed  and  clothed 
and  equipped  and  free.  He  must  earn  this  living 
or  equip  himself  to  earn  it  in  some  way  not  socially 
disadvantageous,  he  must  contrive  as  far  as 
possible  that  the  work  he  does  shall  be  construc- 
tive and  contributory  to  the  general  well-being. 

And  these  primary  necessities  of  food,  clothing 
and  freedom  being  secured,  one  comes  to  the 
general  disposition  of  one's  surplus  energy.  With 
regard  to  that  I  think  that  a  very  simple  proposi- 
tion follows  from  the  broad  beliefs  I  have  chosen 
to  adopt.  The  general  duty  of  a  man,  his  exis- 
tence being  secured,  is  to  educate  and  chiefly  to 
educate  and  develop  himself.  It  is  his  duty  to 
live,  to  make  all  he  can  out  of  himself  and  life, 
to  get  full  of  experience,  to  make  himself  fine  and 
perceiving  and  expressive,  to  render  his  experience 
and  perceptions  honestly  and  helpfully  to  others. 
And  in  particular  he  has  to  educate  himself  and 
others  with  himself  in  Socialism.  He  has  to  make 
and  keep  this  idea  of  synthetic  human  effort  and 
of  conscious  constructive  effort  clear  first  to  him- 
self and  then  clear  in  the  general  mind.     For  it  is 


150  First  and  Last  Things 

an  idea  that  comes  and  goes.  We  are  all  of  us 
continually  lapsing  from  it  towards  Individual 
isolation  again.  He  needs,  we  all  need,  constant 
refreshment  in  this  belief  if  it  is  to  remain  a  pre- 
dominant living  fact  in  our  lives. 

And  that  duty  of  education,  of  building  up  the 
collective  idea  and  organisation  of  humanity,  falls 
into  various  divisions  depending  in  their  impor- 
tance upon  individual  quality.  For  all  there  is 
one  personal  work  that  none  may  evade,  and 
that  is  thinking  hard,  criticising  strenuously  and 
understanding  as  clearly  as  one  can  religion, 
socialism  and  the  general  principle  of  one's  acts. 
The  intellectual  factor  is  of  primary  importance 
in  my  religion.  I  can  see  no  more  reason  why 
Salvation  should  come  to  the  intellectually  in- 
capable than  to  the  morally  incapable.  For 
simple  souls  thinking  in  simple  processes,  Sal- 
vation perhaps  comes  easily,  but  there  is  none 
for  the  intellectual  coward,  for  the  mental  sloven 
and  sluggard,  for  the  stupid  and  obdurate  mind. 
The  Believer  will  think  hard  and  continue  to  grow 
and  learn,  to  read  and  seek  discussion  as  his 
needs  determine. 

Correlated  with  one's  own  intellectual  activity, 
part  of  it  and  growing  out  of  it  for  almost  every- 
one, is  intellectual  work  with  and  upon  others. 


Of  General  Conduct  151 

By  teaching  we  learn.     Not  to  communicate  one's 
thoughts  to  others,   to  keep   one's  thoughts  to 
oneself  as  people  say,  is  either  cowardice  or  pride. 
It  is  a  form  of  sin.     It  is  a  duty  to  talk,  teach, 
explain,  write,  lecture,  read  and  listen.     Every 
truly  religious   man,   every  good   Socialist,   is   a 
propagandist.     Those  who  cannot  write  or  dis- 
cuss can  talk,  those  who  cannot  argue  can  induce 
people  to  listen  to  others  and  read.     We  have  a 
belief  and  an  idea  that  we  want  to  spread,  each 
to  the  utmost  of  his  means  and  measure,  through- 
out all  the  world.     We  have  a  thought  that  we 
want  to  make  humanity's  thought.     And  it  is  a 
duty  too  that    one  should  within  the  compass 
of    one's    ability,    make    teaching,    writing    and 
lecturing  possible  where  it  has  not  existed  before. 
This  can  be  done  in  a  hundred  ways,  by  founding 
and  enlarging  schools  and  universities  and  chairs, 
for  example;  by  making  print  and  reading  and 
all  the  material  of  thought  cheap  and  abundant; 
by  organising  discussion  and  societies  for  enquiry. 
And  talk  and  thought  and  study  are  but  the 
more  generalised  aspects  of  duty.     The  Believer 
may   find   his   own   special   aptitude   lies  rather 
among  concrete  things,  in  experimenting  and  pro- 
moting experiments  in  collective  action.     Things 
teach  as  well  as  words,  and  some  of  us  are  most 


152  First  and  Last  Things 

expressive  by  concrete  methods.  The  Believer 
will  work  himself  and  help  forward  others  to  his 
utmost  in  all  these  developments  of  material 
civilisation,  in  organised  sanitation  for  example, 
all  those  developments  that  force  collective  acts 
upon  communities  and  collective  realisations  into 
the  minds  of  men.  And  the  whole  field  of  scien- 
tific research  is  a  field  of  duty  calling  to  everyone 
who  can  enter  it,  to  add  to  the  permanent  store 
of  knowledge  and  new  resources  for  the  race. 

The  Mind  of  that  Civilised  State  we  seek  to 
make  by  giving  ourselves  into  its  making  is  evi- 
dently the  central  work  before  us.  But  while 
the  writer,  the  publisher  and  printer,  the  book- 
seller and  librarian  and  teacher  and  preacher,  the 
investigator  and  experimenter,  the  reader  and 
everyone  who  thinks,  will  be  contributing  them- 
selves to  this  great  organised  mind  and  intention 
in  the  world,  many  sorts  of  specialised  men  will 
be  more  immediately  concerned  with  parallel 
and  more  concrete  aspects  of  the  human  syn- 
thesis. The  medical  worker  and  the  medical 
investigator  for  example,  will  be  building  up  the 
body  of  a  new  generation,  the  Body  of  the  Civilised 
State;  and  he  will  be  doing  all  he  can  not  simply 
as  an  individual,  but  as  a  citizen,  to  organise  his 
services  of  cure  and  prevention,  of  hygiene  and 


Of  General  Conduct  153 

selection.  A  great  and  growing  multitude  of 
men  will  be  working  out  the  apparatus  of  the 
civilised  state;  the  organisers  of  transit  and 
housing,  the  engineers  in  their  incessantly  in- 
creasing variety,  the  miners  and  geologists  es- 
timating the  world's  resources  in  metals  and 
minerals,  the  mechanical  inventors  perpetually 
economising  force.  The  scientific  agriculturist 
again  will  be  studying  the  food  supply  of  the  world 
as  a  whole,  and  how  it  may  be  increased  and  dis- 
tributed and  economised.  And  to  the  student  of 
law  comes  the  task  of  rephrasing  his  intricate  and 
often  quite  beautiful  science  in  relation  to  modern 
conceptions.  All  these  and  a  hundred  other 
aspects  are  integral  to  the  wide  project  of  Con- 
structive Socialism  as  it  shapes  itself  in  my  faith. 


§6. 


Wrong  Ways  of  Living. — When  we  lay  down 
the  proposition  that  it  is  one's  duty  to  get  one's 
living  in  some  way  not  socially  disadvantageous, 
and  as  far  as  possible  by  work  that  is  contributory 
to  the  general  well-being  and  development,  when 
we  state  that  one's  surplus  energies,  after  one's 
living  is  gained,  must  be  devoted  to  experience, 
self-development  and  constructive  work,  it  is 
clear  we  condemn  by  implication  many  modes  of 
life  that  are  followed  to-day. 

For  example  it  is  manifest  we  condemn  living 
in  idleness  or  on  non-productive  sport,  on  the 
income  derived  from  private  property,  and  all 
sorts  of  ways  of  earning  a  living  that  cannot  be 
shown  to  conduce  to  the  constructive  process. 
We  condemn  trading  that  is  merely  speculative, 
and  in  fact  all  trading  and  manufacture  that  is 
not  a  positive  social  service;  we  condemn  living 
by  gambling  or  by  playing  games  for  either  stakes 
or  pay.  Much  more  do  we  condemn  dishonest 
or  fraudulent  trading  and  every  act  of  advertise- 
ment   that    is    not    punctiliously    truthful.     We 

154 


Of  General  Conduct  155 

must  condemn  too  the  taking  of  any  income  from 
the  community  that  is  neither  earned  nor  con- 
ceded in  the  collective  interest.  But  to  this 
last  point  and  to  certain  issues  arising  out  of 
it,  I  will  return  in  the  section  next  following 
this  one. 

And  it  follows  evidently  from  our  general 
propositions  that  every  form  of  prostitution  is 
a  double  sin,  against  one's  individuality  and 
against  the  species  which  we  serve  by  the  de- 
velopment of  that  individuality's  preferences 
and  idiosyncrasies. 

And  by  prostitution  I  mean  not  simply  the  act 
of  a  woman  who  sells  for  money  and  against  her 
thoughts  and  preferences,  her  smiles  and  endear- 
ments and  the  secret  beauty  and  pleasure  of  her 
body,  but  the  act  of  anyone  who,  to  gain  a  living, 
suppresses  himself,  does  things  in  a  manner  alien 
to  himself  and  subserves  aims  and  purposes  with 
which  he  disagrees.  The  journalist  who  writes 
against  his  personal  convictions,  the  solicitor  who 
knowingly  assists  the  schemes  of  rogues,  the 
barrister  who  pits  himself  against  what  he  per- 
ceives is  justice  and  the  right,  the  artist  who  does 
unbeautiful  things  or  less  beautiful  things  than 
he  might,  simply  to  please  base  employers,  the 
craftsman    who    makes    instruments    for    foolish 


156  First  and  Last  Things 

uses  or  bad  uses,  the  dealer  who  sells  and  pushes 
an  article  because  it  fits  the  customer's  folly;  all 
these  are  prostitutes  of  mind  and  soul  if  not  of 
body,  with  no  right  to  lift  an  eyebrow  at  the 
painted  disasters  of  the  streets. 


§7- 


Social  Parasitism  and  Contemporary  In- 
justices.— These  broad  principles  about  one's 
way  of  living  are  very  simple;  our  minds  move 
freely  among  them.  But  the  real  interest  is  with 
the  individual  case,  and  the  individual  case  is 
almost  always  complicated  by  the  fact  that  the 
existing  social  and  economic  system  is  based  upon 
conditions  that  the  growing  collective  intelligence 
condemns  as  unjust  and  undesirable,  and  that 
the  constructive  spirit  in  men  now  seeks  to  super- 
sede. We  have  to  live  in  a  provisional  State 
while  we  dream  of  and  work  for  a  better  one. 

The  ideal  life  for  the  ordinary  man  in  a  civilised, 
that  is  to  say  a  Socialist,  State  would  be  in  public 
employment  or  in  private  enterprise  aiming  at 
public  recognition.  But  in  our  present  world 
only  a  small  minority  can  have  that  direct  and 
honourable  relation  of  public  service  in  the  work 
they  do;  most  of  the  important  business  of  the 
community  is  done  upon  the  older  and  more  tor- 
tuous private  ownership  system,  and  the  great 

mass  of  men  in  socially  useful  employment  find 

i57 


158  First  and  Last  Things 

themselves  working  only  indirectly  for  the  com- 
munity and  directly  for  the  profit  of  a  private 
owner,  or  they  themselves  are  private  owners. 
Every  man  who  has  any  money  put  by  in  the  bank 
or  any  money  invested,  is  a  private  owner,  and 
in  so  far  as  he  draws  interest  or  profit  from  this 
investment  he  is  a  social  parasite.  It  is  in  prac- 
tice almost  impossible  to  divest  oneself  of  that 
parasitic  quality,  however  straightforward  the  gen- 
eral principle  may  be. 

It  is  practically  impossible  for  two  equally  valid 
sets  of  reasons.  The  first  is  that  under  existing 
conditions,  saving  and  investment  constitute  the 
only  way  to  rest  and  security  in  old  age,  to  leisure, 
study  and  intellectual  independence,  to  the  safe 
upbringing  of  a  family  and  the  happiness  of  one's 
weaker  dependents.  These  are  things  that  should 
not  be  left  for  the  individual  to  provide;  in  the 
civilised  state,  the  state  itself  will  insure  every 
citizen  against  these  anxieties  that  now  make  the 
study  of  the  City  Article  almost  a  duty.  To 
abandon  saving  and  investment  to-day,  and  to 
do  so  is  of  course  to  abandon  all  insurance,  is 
to  become  a  driven  and  uncertain  worker,  to  risk 
one's  personal  freedom  and  culture  and  the  up- 
bringing and  efficiency  of  one's  children.  It  is 
to  lower  the  standard  of  one's  personal  civilisa- 


Of  General  Conduct  159 

tion,  to  think  with  less  deliberation  and  less 
detachment,  to  fall  away  from  that  work  of  ac- 
cumulating fine  habits  and  beautiful  and  pleasant 
ways  of  living  contributory  to  the  coming  State. 
And  in  the  second  place  there  is  not  only  no  return 
for  such  a  sacrifice  in  anything  won  for  Socialism, 
but  for  fine-thinking  and  living  people  to  give  up 
property  is  merely  to  let  it  pass  into  the  hands 
of  more  egoistic  possessors.  Since  at  present 
things  must  be  privately  owned,  it  is  better  that 
they  should  be  owned  by  people  consciously 
working  for  social  development  and  willing  to 
use  them  to  that  end. 

We  have  to  live  in  the  present  system  and 
under  the  conditions  of  the  present  system,  while 
we  work  with  all  our  power  to  change  that  system 
for  one  more  completely  organised. 

The  case  of  Cadburys,  the  cocoa  and  choco- 
late makers,  and  the  practical  slavery  under  the 
Portuguese  of  the  East  African  negroes  who  grow 
the  raw  material  for  Messrs.  Cadbury,  is  an  il- 
luminating one  in  this  connection.  The  Cad- 
burys, like  the  Rowntrees,  are  well  known  as  an 
energetic  and  public-spirited  family,  the  social 
and  industrial  experiments  at  Bourne ville  and  the 
general  social  and  political  activities  are  broad 
and  constructive  in  the  best   sense.     But  they 


160  First  and  Last  Things 

find  themselves  in  the  peculiar  dilemma  that  they 
must  either  abandon  an  important  and  profitable 
portion  of  their  great  manufacture  or  continue  to 
buy  produce  grown  under  cruel  and  even  horrible 
conditions.  Their  retirement  from  this  branch 
of  the  cocoa  and  chocolate  trade  concerned  would 
under  these  circumstances  mean  no  diminution 
of  the  manufacture  or  of  the  horrors  of  this  par- 
ticular slavery;  it  would  mean  merely  that  less 
humanitarian  manufacturers  would  step  in  to 
take  up  the  abandoned  trade.  The  self-righteous 
individualist  would  have  no  doubts  about  the 
question;  he  would  keep  his  hands  clean  anyhow, 
retrench  his  social  work,  abandon  the  types  of 
cocoa  involved,  and  pass  by  on  the  other  side. 
But  indeed  I  do  not  believe  we  came  into  the  mire 
of  life  simply  to  hold  our  hands  up  out  of  it. 
Messrs.  Cadbury  follow  a  better  line;  they  keep 
their  business  going  and  exert  themselves  in 
every  way  to  let  light  into  the  secrets  of  Portu- 
guese East  Africa  and  to  organise  a  better  control 
of  these  labour  cruelties.  That  I  think  is  alto- 
gether the  right  course  in  this  difficulty. 

We  cannot  keep  our  hands  clean  in  this  world 
as  it  is.  There  is  no  excuse  indeed  for  a  life  of 
fraud  or  any  other  positive  fruitless  wrongdoing 
or  for  a  purely  parasitic  non-productive  life,  yet 


Of  General  Conduct  161 

all  but  the  fortunate  few  who  are  properly  paid 
and  recognised  state  servants,  must  in  financial 
and  business  matters  do  their  best  amidst  and 
through  institutions  tainted  with  injustice  and 
flawed  with  unrealities.  All  Socialists  everywhere 
are  like  expeditionary  soldiers  far  ahead  of  the 
main  advance.  The  organised  State  that  should 
own  and  administer  their  possessions  for  the 
general  good  has  not  arrived  to  take  them  over; 
and  in  the  meanwhile  they  must  act  like  its 
anticipatory  agents  according  to  their  lights  and 
make  things  ready  for  its  coming. 

The  Believer  then  who  is  not  in  the  public 
service,  whose  life  lies  among  the  operations  of 
private  enterprise  must  work  always  on  the  sup- 
position that  the  property  he  administers,  the 
business  in  which  he  works,  the  profession  he 
follows,  is  destined  to  be  taken  over  and  organ- 
ised collectively  for  the  commonweal  and  must  be 
made  ready  for  the  taking  over,  that  the  private 
outlook  he  secures  by  investment,  the  provision 
he  makes  for  his  friends  and  children,  are  tem- 
porary, wasteful,  unavoidable  devices  to  be  pre- 
sently merged  in  and  superseded  by  the  broad 
and  scientific  previsions  of  the  co-operative  State. 


§8. 


The  Case  of  the  Wife  and  Mother. — These 
principles  give  a  rule  also  for  the  problem  that 
faces  the  great  majority  of  thinking  wives  and 
mothers  to-day.     The  most  urgent  and  necessary 
social  work  falls  upon  them ;  they  bear,  and  largely 
educate  and  order  the  homes  of  the  next  genera- 
tion, and  they  have  no  direct  recognition  from 
the  community  for  either  of  these  supreme  func- 
tions.    They  are  supposed  to  perform  them  not 
for  God  or  the  world,  but  to  please  and  satisfy  a 
particular  man.     Our  laws,  our  social  conventions, 
our  economic  methods,  so  hem  a  woman  about 
that  however  fitted  for  and  desirous  of  maternity 
she  may  be,  she  can  only  effectually  do  that  duty 
in  a  dependent  relation  to  her  husband.     Nearly 
always  he  is  the  paymaster  and  if  his  payments 
are  grudging  or  irregular,  she  has  little  remedy 
short  of  a  breach  and  the  rupture  of  the  home. 
Her  duty  is  conceived  of  as  first  to  him  and  only 
secondarily  to  her  children  and  the  State.     Many 
wives   become  under  these   circumstances   mere 

prostitutes  to  their  husbands,  often  evading  the 

162 


Of  General  Conduct  163 

bearing  of  children  with  their  consent  and  even 
at  their  request,  and  "  loving  for  a  living."  That 
is  a  natural  outcome  of  the  proprietary  theory  of 
the  family  out  of  which  our  civilisation  emerges. 
But  our  modern  ideas  trend  more  and  more  to 
regard  a  woman's  primary  duty  to  be  her  duty 
to  the  children  and  to  the  world  to  which  she  gives 
them.  She  is  to  be  a  citizen  side  by  side  with  her 
husband ;  no  longer  is  he  to  intervene  between  her 
and  the  community.  As  a  matter  of  contem- 
porary fact  he  can  do  so  and  does  do  so  habitually, 
and  most  women  have  to  square  their  ideas  of 
life  to  that  possibility. 

Before  any  woman  who  is  clear-headed  enough 
to  perceive  that  this  great  business  of  motherhood 
is  one  of  supreme  public  importance,  there  are  a 
number  of  alternatives  at  the  present  time.  She 
may,  like  Grant  Allen's  heroine  in  The  Woman 
Who  Did,  declare  an  exaggerated  and  impossible 
independence,  refuse  the  fetters  of  marriage  and 
bear  children  to  a  lover.  This  in  the  present  state 
of  public  opinion  in  almost  every  existing  social 
atmosphere  would  be  a  purely  anarchistic  course. 
It  would  mean  a  fatherless  home,  and  since  the 
woman  will  have  to  play  the  double  part  of 
income-earner  and  mother,  an  impoverished  and 
struggling  home.      It  would  mean  also  an  unsocial 


1 64  First  and  Last  Things 

because  ostracised  home.  In  most  cases,  and 
even  assuming  it  to  be  right  in  idea  it  would  still 
be  on  all  fours  with  that  immediate  abandonment 
of  private  property  we  have  already  discussed,  a 
sort  of  suicide  that  helps  the  world  nothing. 

Or  she  may  "strike,"  refuse  marriage  and  pur- 
sue a  solitary  and  childless  career,  engaging  her 
surplus  energies  in  constructive  work.  But  that 
also  is  suicide;  it  is  to  miss  the  keenest  experi- 
ences, the  finest  realities  life  has  to  offer. 

Or  she  may  meet  a  man  whom  she  can  trust 
to  keep  a  treaty  with  her  and  supplement  the 
common  interpretations  and  legal  insufficiencies 
of  the  marriage  bond,  who  will  respect  her  always 
as  a  free  and  independent  person,  will  abstain 
absolutely  from  authoritative  methods  and  will 
either  share  and  trust  his  income  and  property 
with  her  in  a  frank  communism,  or  give  her  a 
sufficient  and  private  income  for  her  personal  use. 
It  is  only  fair  under  existing  economic  conditions 
that  at  marriage  a  husband  should  insure  his 
life  in  his  wife's  interest,  and  I  do  not  think  it 
would  be  impossible  to  bring  our  legal  marriage 
contract  into  accordance  with  modern  ideas  in 
that  matter.  Certainly  it  should  be  legally  im- 
perative that  at  the  birth  of  each  child  a  new 
policy  upon  its  father's  life,  as  the  income-getter, 


Of  General  Conduct  165 

should  begin.  The  latter  provision  at  least  should 
be  a  normal  condition  of  marriage  and  one  that  a 
wife  should  have  power  to  enforce  when  payments 
fall  away.  With  such  safeguards  and  under 
such  conditions  marriage  ceases  to  be  a  haphazard 
dependence  for  a  woman,  and  she  may  live,  teach- 
ing and  rearing  and  free,  almost  as  though  the 
co-operative  commonwealth  had  come. 

But  in  many  cases,  since  great  numbers  of 
women  marry  so  young  and  so  ignorantly  that 
their  thinking  about  realities  begins  only  after 
marriage,  a  woman  will  find  herself  already  mar- 
ried to  a  man  and  married  before  she  realised  the 
significance  of  these  things.  She  may  be  already 
the  mother  of  children.  Her  husband's  ideas 
may  not  be  her  ideas.  He  may  dominate,  he 
may  prohibit,  he  may  intervene,  he  may  default. 
He  may,  if  he  sees  fit,  burden  the  family  income 
with  the  charges  of  his  illegitimate  offspring. 

We  live  in  the  world  as  it  is  and  not  in  the 
world  as  it  should  be.  That  sentence  becomes 
the  refrain  of  this  discussion. 

The  normal  modern  married  woman  has  to 
make  the  best  of  a  bad  position,  to  do  her  best 
under  the  old  conditions,  to  live  as  though  she 
was  under  the  new  conditions,  to  make  good 
citizens,  to  give  her  spare  energies  as  far  as  she 


166  First  and  Last  Things 

can,  to  bringing  about  a  better  state  of  affairs. 
Like  the  private  property  owner  and  the  official 
in  a  privately  owned  business,  her  best  method  of 
conduct  is  to  consider  herself  an  unrecognised 
public  official,  irregularly  commanded  and  im- 
properly paid.  There  is  no  good  in  flagrant 
rebellion.  She  has  to  study  her  particular  cir- 
cumstances and  make  what  good  she  can  out  of 
them,  keeping  her  face  towards  the  coming  time. 
I  cannot  better  the  image  I  have  already  used 
for  the  thinking  and  believing  modern-minded 
people  of  to-day  as  an  advance  guard  cut  off 
from  proper  supplies,  ill  furnished  so  that  make- 
shift prevails,  and  rather  demoralised.  We  have 
to  be  wise  as  well  as  loyal;  discretion  itself  is 
loyalty  to  the  coming  State. 


§9. 


Associations. — In  the  previous  sections  I  have 
dealt  with  the  single  individual's  duty  in  relation 
to  the  general  community  and  to  law  and  gener- 
ally received  institutions.  But  there  is  a  new 
set  of  questions  now  to  be  considered.  Let  us 
take  up  the  modifications  that  arise  when  it  is 
not  one  isolated  individual  but  a  group  of  in- 
dividuals who  find  themselves  in  disagreement 
with  contemporary  rule  or  usage  and  disposed  to 
find  a  Tightness  in  things  not  established  or  not 
conceded.  They  too,  live  in  the  world  as  it  is 
and  not  in  the  world  as  it  ought  to  be,  but  their 
association  opens  up  quite  new  possibilities  of 
anticipating  coming  developments  of  living  and 
of  protecting  and  guaranteeing  one  another  from 
what  for  a  single  unprotected  individual  would 
be  the  inevitable  consequences  of  a  particular 
line  of  conduct,  conduct  which  happened  to  be 
unorthodox  or  only,  in  the  face  of  existing  con- 
ditions, unwise. 

For  example,  a  friend  of  mine  who  had  read  a 

copy  of  the  preceding  section  wrote  as  follows: 

167 


1 68  First  and  Last  Things 

' '  I  can  see  no  reason  why  even  to-day  a  number 
of  persons  avowedly  united  in  the  same  'Belief 
and  recognising  each  other  as  the  self-constituted 
social  vanguard  should  not  form  a  recognised 
spiritual  community  centring  round  some  kind 
of  'religious'  edifice  and  ritual,  and  agree  to 
register  and  consecrate  the  union  of  any  couples 
of  the  members  according  to  a  contract  which  the 
whole  community  should  have  voted  acceptable. 
The  community  would  be  the  guardian  of  money 
deposited  or  paid  in  gradually  as  insurance  for 
the  children.  And  the  fact  of  the  whole  business 
being  regular,  open  and  connected  with  a  common 
intellectual  and  moral  ritual  and  common  name, 
such  for  example  as  your  name  of  'The  Samurai' 
would  secure  the  respect  of  outsiders  so  that 
eventually  these  new  marriage  arrangements 
would  modify  the  old  ones.  People  would  ask 
'  Were  you  married  before  the  registrar  ? '  and  the 
answer  would  be,  'No,  we  are  Samurai  and  were 
united  before  the  Elders.'  In  Catholic  countries 
those  who  use  only  the  civil  marriage  are  con- 
sidered outcasts  by  the  religiously  minded,  which 
shows  that  recognition  by  the  State  is  not  as 
potent  as  recognition  by  the  community  to  which 
one  belongs.  The  religious  marriage  is  considered 
the  only  binding  one  by  Catholics,  and  the  civil 


Of  General  Conduct  169 

ceremony  is  respected  merely  because  the  State 
has  brute  force  behind  it." 

There  is  in  this  passage  one  particularly  valu- 
able idea,  the  idea  of  an  association  of  people  to 
guarantee  the  welfare  of  their  children  in  common. 
I  will  follow  that  a  little,  though  it  takes  me 
away  from  my  main  line  of  thought.  It  seems 
to  me  that  such  an  association  might  be  found  in 
many  cases  a  practicable  way  of  easing  the  con- 
flict that  so  many  men  and  women  experience, 
between  their  individual  public  service  and  their 
duty  to  their  own  families.  Many  people  of 
exceptional  gifts,  whose  gifts  are  not  necessarily 
remunerative,  are  forced  by  these  personal  con- 
siderations to  direct  them  more  or  less  askew,  to 
divert  them  from  their  best  application  to  some 
inferior  but  money-making  use,  and  many  more 
are  given  the  disagreeable  alternative  of  evading 
parentage  or  losing  the  freedom  of  mind  needed 
for  socially  beneficial  work.  This  is  particularly 
the  case  with  many  scientific  investigators,  many 
sociological  and  philosophical  workers,  many 
artists,  teachers  and  the  like.  Even  when  such 
people  are  fairly  prosperous  personally  they  do 
not  care  to  incur  the  obligation  to  keep  prosperous 
at  any  cost  to  their  work  that  a  family  involves.  It 
gives  great  ease  of  mind  to  any  sort  of  artistic 


170  First  and  Last  Things 

or  intellectual  worker  to  feel  free  to  become  poor. 
I  do  not  see  why  a  group  of  such  people  should  not 
attempt  a  merger  of  their  family  anxieties  and 
family  adventures,  insure  all  its  members,  and 
while  each  retains  a  sufficient  personal  inde- 
pendence for  freedom  of  word  and  movement, 
pool  their  family  solicitudes  and  resources,  or- 
ganise a  collective  school  and  a  common  main- 
tenance fund  for  all  the  children  born  of  members 
of  the  association.  I  do  not  see  why  they  should 
not  in  fact  develop  a  permanent  Trust  to  main- 
tain, educate  and  send  out  all  their  children  into 
the  world,  a  Trust  to  which  their  childless  friends 
and  associates  could  contribute  by  gift  and  bequest 
and  to  which  the  irregular  good  fortune  that  is 
not  uncommon  in  the  careers  of  these  exceptional 
types  could  be  devoted.  I  do  not  mean  any 
sort  of  Charity  but  an  enlarged  family  basis. 

Such  an  idea  passes  very  readily  into  the  form 
of  a  Eugenic  association.  It  would  be  quite 
possible  and  very  interesting  for  prosperous 
people  interested  in  Eugenics  to  create  a  Trust 
for  the  offspring  of  a  selected  band  of  beneficia- 
ries, and  with  increasing  resources  to  admit  new 
members  and  so  build  up  within  the  present  so- 
cial system  a  special  strain  of  chosen  people.  So 
far  people  with  Eugenic  ideas  and  people  with 


Of  General  Conduct  171 

conceptions  of  associated  and  consolidated  families 
have  been  too  various  and  too  dispersed  for  such 
associations  to  be  practicable,  but  as  such  views 
of  life  become  more  common,  the  chance  of  a 
number  of  sufficiently  homogeneous  and  con- 
genial people  working  out  the  method  of  such  a 
grouping  increases  steadily. 

Moreover  I  can  imagine  no  reason  to  prevent 
any  women  who  are  in  agreement  with  the  moral 
standards  of  The  Woman  Who  Did  (standards 
I  will  not  discuss  at  this  present  point  but  defer 
for  a  later  section)  combining  for  mutual  pro- 
tection and  social  support  and  the  welfare  of 
such  children  as  they  may  bear.  Then  certainly, 
to  the  extent  that  this  succeeds,  the  objections 
that  arise  from  the  evil  effects  upon  the  children 
of  social  isolation  disappear.  This  isolation  would 
be  at  worst  a  group  isolation  and  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  my  friend  is  right  in  pointing 
out  that  there  is  much  more  social  toleration 
for  an  act  committed  under  the  sanction  of  a 
group  than  for  an  isolated  act  that  may  be 
merely  impulsive  misbehaviour  masquerading  as 
high  principle. 

It  seems  to  me  remarkable  that,  to  the  best  of 
my  knowledge,  so  obvious  a  form  of  combination 
has  never  yet  been  put  in  practice.     It  is  remark- 


172  First  and  Last  Things 

able  but  not  inexplicable.  The  first  people  to 
develop  novel  ideas,  more  particularly  of  this 
type,  are  usually  people  in  isolated  circumstances 
and  temperamentally  incapable  of  disciplined  co- 
operation. 


§  IO. 

Of  an  Organised  Brotherhood. — The  idea 
of  organising  the  progressive  elements  in  the 
social  chaos  into  a  regulated  developing  force  is 
one  that  has  had  a  great  attraction  for  me.  I 
have  written  upon  it  elsewhere,  and  I  make  no 
apology  for  returning  to  it  here  and  examining 
it  in  the  light  of  various  afterthoughts  and  with 
fresh  suggestions. 

I  first  broached  the  idea  in  a  book  called  An- 
ticipationSy  wherein  I  described  a  possible  devel- 
opment of  thought  and  concerted  action  which 
I  called  New  Republicanism,  and  afterwards  I 
redrew  the  thing  rather  more  elaborately  in  my 
Modern  Utopia.  I  had  been  struck  by  the 
apparently  chaotic  and  wasteful  character  of 
most  contemporary  reform  movements,  and  it 
seemed  reasonable  to  suppose  that  those  who 
aimed  at  organising  society  and  replacing  chaos 
and  waste  by  wise  arrangements  might  very  well 
begin  by  producing  a  more  effective  organisation 
for  their  own  efforts.  These  complexities  of 
good  intention  made  me  impatient,  and  I  sought 

industriously  in  my  mind  for  a  short  cut  through 

173 


174  First  and  Last  Things 

them.  In  doing  so  I  think  I  overlooked  alto- 
gether too  much  how  heterogeneous  all  pro- 
gressive thought  and  progressive  people  must 
necessarily  be. 

In  my  Modern  Utopia  I  turned  this  idea  of  an 
organised  brotherhood  about  very  thoroughly* 
I  looked  at  it  from  this  point  and  that;  I  let  it 
loose  as  it  were  and  gave  it  its  fullest  development 
and  so  produced  a  sort  of  secular  Order  of  govern- 
ing men  and  women.  In  a  spirit  entirely  jour- 
nalistic I  called  this  the  Order  of  the  Samurai, 
for  at  the  time  I  wrote  there  was  much  interest 
in  Bushido  because  of  the  capacity  for  hardship 
and  self-sacrifice  this  chivalrous  culture  appears 
to  have  developed  in  the  Japanese.  These 
Samurai  of  mine  were  a  sort  of  voluntary  nobility 
who  supplied  the  administrative  and  organising 
forces  that  held  my  Utopian  world  together. 
They  were  the  "New  Republicans"  of  my  Anti- 
cipations and  Mankind  in  the  Making,  much 
developed  and  supposed  triumphant  and  ruling 
the  world. 

I  sought  of  course  to  set  out  these  ideas  as 
attractively  as  possible  in  my  books,  and  they 
have  as  a  matter  of  fact  proved  very  attractive 
to  a  certain  number  of  people.  Quite  a  number 
have  wanted  to  go  on  with  them.     Several  little 


Of  General  Conduct  1 75 

organisations  of  Utopians  and  Samurai  and  the 
like  have  sprung  up  and  informed  me  of  them- 
selves, and  some  survive;  and  young  men  do  still 
at  times  drop  into  my  world  "personally  or  by 
letter"   declaring   themselves   New   Republicans. 

All  this  has  been  very  helpful  and  at  times  a 
little  embarrassing  to  me.  It  has  given  me  an 
opportunity  of  seeing  the  ideals  I  flung  into  the 
distance  beyond  Sirius  and  among  the  mountain 
snows,  coming  home  partially  incarnate  in  girls 
and  young  men.  It  has  made  me  look  into  in- 
dividualised human  aspirations,  human  impa- 
tience, human  vanity  and  a  certain  human  need 
of  fellowship,  at  close  quarters.  It  has  illuminated 
subtle  and  fine  traits ;  it  has  displayed  nobilities, 
and  it  has  brought  out  aspects  of  human  absurdity 
to  which  only  the  pencil  of  Mr.  George  Morrow 
could  do  adequate  justice.  The  thing  I  have 
had  to  explain  most  generally  is  that  my  New 
Republicans  and  Samurai  are  but  figures  of 
suggestion,  figures  to  think  over  and  use  in  plan- 
ning disciplines  but  by  no  means  copies  to  follow. 
I  have  had  to  go  over  again,  as  though  it  had 
never  been  raised  before  in  any  previous  writings, 
the  difference  between  the  spirit  and  the  letter. 

These  responses  have  on  the  whole  confirmed 
my  main  idea  that  there  is  a  real  need,  a  need  that 


176  First  and  Last  Things 

many  people,  and  especially  adolescent  people, 
feel  very  strongly,  for  some  sort  of  constructive 
brotherhood  of  a  closer  type  than  mere  political 
association,  to  co-ordinate  and  partly  guide  their 
loose  chaotic  efforts  to  get  hold  of  life — but  they 
have  also  convinced  me  that  no  wide  and  com- 
prehensive organisation  can  supply  that  want. 

My  New  Republicans  were  presented  as  in  many 
respects  harsh  and  overbearing  people,  "a  sort 
of  outspoken  secret  society"  for  the  organisation 
of  the  world.  They  were  not  so  much  an  ideal 
order  as  the  Samurai  of  the  later  book,  being 
rather  deduced  as  a  possible  outcome  of  certain 
forces  and  tendencies  in  contemporary  life  (a.  d. 
1900)  than,  as  literary  people  say,  "created. " 
They  were  to  be  drawn  from  among  engineers, 
doctors,  scientific  business  organisers  and  the  like, 
and  I  found  that  it  is  to  energetic  young  men  of 
the  more  responsible  classes  that  this  particular 
ideal  appeals.  Their  organisation  was  quite  in- 
formal, a  common  purpose  held  them  together. 

Most  of  the  people  who  have  written  to  me  to 
call  themselves  New  Republicans  are  I  find  also 
Imperialists  and  Tariff  Reformers,  and  I  suppose 
that  among  the  prominent  political  figures  of 
to-day  the  nearest  approach  to  my  New  Repub- 
licans is  Lord  Milner  and  the  Socialist-Unionists 


Of  General  Conduct  177 

of  his  group.  It  is  a  type  harshly  constructive, 
inclined  to  an  unscrupulous  pose  and  slipping 
readily  into  a  Kiplingesque  brutality. 

The  Samurai  on  the  other  hand  were  more  pic- 
turesque figures,  with  a  much  more  elaborated 
organisation. 

I  may  perhaps  recapitulate  the  points  about 
that  Order  here. 

In  the  Modern  Utopia  the  visitor  from  earth 
remarks : 

"  These  Samurai  form  the  real  body  of  the  State. 
All  this  time  that  I  have  spent  going  to  and  fro  in 
this  planet,  it  has  been  growing  upon  me  that  this 
order  of  men  and  women,  wearing  such  a  uniform 
as  you  wear,  and  with  faces  strengthened  by  dis- 
cipline and  touched  with  devotion,  is  the  Utopian 
reality;  that  but  for  them,  the  whole  fabric  of  these 
fair  appearances  would  crumble  and  tarnish,  shrink 
and  shrivel,  until  at  last,  back  I  should  be  amidst 
the  grime  and  disorders  of  the  life  of  earth.  Tell  me 
about  these  samurai,  who  remind  me  of  Plato's 
guardians,  who  look  like  Knight  Templars,  who 
bear  a  name  that  recalls  the  swordsmen  of  Japan. 
What  are  they?  Are  they  an  hereditary  caste,  a 
specially  educated  order,  an  elected  class?  For,  cer- 
tainly, this  world  turns  upon  them  as  a  door  upon 
its  hinges." 

His  informant  explains : 

"Practically  the  whole  of  the  responsible  rule  of  the 
12 


178  First  and  Last  Things 

world  is  in  their  hands;  all  our  head  teachers  and 
disciplinary  heads  of  colleges,  our  judges,  barristers, 
employers  of  labour  beyond  a  certain  limit,  prac- 
tising medical  men,  legislators,  must  be  samurai, 
and  all  the  executive  committees  and  so  forth,  that 
play  so  large  a  part  in  our  affairs,  are  drawn  by 
lot  exclusively  from  them.  The  order  is  not  hered- 
itary— we  know  just  enough  of  biology  and  the  un- 
certainties of  inheritance  to  know  how  silly  that 
would  be — and  it  does  not  require  an  early  conse- 
cration or  novitiate  or  ceremonies  and  initiations 
of  that  sort.  The  samurai  are,  in  fact,  volunteers. 
Any  intelligent  adult  in  a  reasonably  healthy  and 
efficient  state  may,  at  any  age  after  five  and  twenty, 
become  one  of  the  samurai  and  take  a  hand  in  the 
universal  control. " 

"  Provided  he  follows  the  Rule." 
"  Precisely — provided  he  follows  the  Rule." 
"I  have  heard  the  phrase,  'voluntary  nobility.'  " 
"That  was  the  idea  of  our  Founders.     They  made 
a   noble   and   privileged   order — open   to   the   whole 
world.     No   one   could   complain   of   an   unjust   ex- 
clusion, for  the  only  thing  that  could  exclude  from 
the   order  was   unwillingness   or  inability  to  follow 
the  Rule." 

"  The  Rule  aims  to  exclude  the  dull  and  base  alto- 
gether, to  discipline  the  impulses  and  emotions,  to 
develop  a  moral  habit  and  sustain  a  man  in  periods 
of  stress,  fatigue  and  temptation,  to  produce  the 
maximum  co-operation  of  all  men  of  good-intent, 
and  in  fact  to  keep  all  the  samurai  in  a  state  of  moral 
and  bodily  health  and  efficiency.  It  does  as  much 
of  this  as  well  as  it  can,  but  of  course  like  all  general 
propositions,  it  does  not  do  it  in  any  case  with  ab- 


Of  General  Conduct  179 

solute  precision.  At  first  in  the  militant  days,  it  was 
a  trifle  hard  and  uncompromising;  it  had  rather  too 
strong  an  appeal  to  the  moral  prig  and  the  harshly 
righteous  man,  but  it  has  undergone,  and  still  under- 
goes, revision  and  expansion,  and  every  year  it 
becomes  a  little  better  adapted  to  the  need  of  a 
general  rule  of  life  that  all  men  may  try  to  follow. 
We  have  now  a  whole  literature  with  many  very 
fine  things  in  it,  written  about  the  Rule. 

"  The  Rule  consists  of  three  parts :  there  is  the  list 
of  things  that  qualify,  the  list  of  things  that  must 
not  be  done,  and  the  list  of  things  that  must  be  done. 
Qualification  exacts  a  little  exertion  as  evidence  of 
good  faith  and  it  is  designed  to  weed  out  the  duller 
dull  and  many  of  the  base. " 

He  goes  on  to  tell  of  certain  intellectual  qualifi- 
cations and  disciplines. 

"  Next  to  the  intellectual  qualification  comes  the 
physical,  the  man  must  be  in  sound  health,  free  from 
certain  foul,  avoidable  and  demoralising  diseases, 
and  in  good  training.  We  reject  men  who  are  fat, 
or  thin,  or  flabby,  or  whose  nerves  are  shaky — we 
refer  them  back  to  training.  And  finally  the  man 
or  woman   must  be   fully  adult." 

"Twenty-one?  But  you  said  twenty-five!" 
"The  age  has  varied.  At  first  it  was  twenty-five 
or  over;  then  the  minimum  became  twenty- five 
for  men  and  twenty-one  for  women.  Now  there 
is  a  feeling  that  it  ought  to  be  raised.  We  don't  want 
to  take  advantage  of  mere  boy  and  girl  emotions — - 
men  of  my  way  of  thinking,  at  any  rate,  don't — we 
want  to  get  our  samurai  with  experiences,   with  a 


180  First  and  Last  Things 

settled  mature  conviction.  Our  hygiene  and  regimen 
are  rapidly  pushing  back  old  age  and  death,  and 
keeping  men  hale  and  hearty  to  eighty  and  more. 
There  's  no  need  to  hurry  the  young.  Let  them  have 
a  chance  of  wine,  love  and  song;  let  them  feel  the 
bite  of  full-blooded  desire,  and  know  what  devils 
they  have  to  reckon  with.    .    .    . 

"  We  forbid  a  good  deal.  Many  small  pleasures 
do  no  great  harm,  but  we  think  it  well  to  forbid  them 
none  the  less,  so  that  we  can  weed  out  the  self- 
indulgent.  We  think  that  a  constant  resistance  to 
little  seductions  is  good  for  a  man's  quality.  At 
any  rate,  it  shows  that  a  man  is  prepared  to  pay 
something  for  his  honour  and  privileges.  We  pre- 
scribe a  regimen  of  food,  forbid  tobacco,  wine,  or  any 
alcoholic    drink,    all   narcotic   drugs.    .    .    . 

"Originally  the  samurai  were  forbidden  usury, 
that  is  to  say  the  lending  of  money  at  fixed  rates 
of  interest.  They  are  still  under  that  interdiction, 
but  since  our  commercial  code  practically  prevents 
usury  altogether,  and  our  law  will  not  recognise  con- 
tracts for  interest  upon  private  accommodation 
loans  to  unprosperous  borrowers"  (he  is  speaking 
of  Utopia),  "it  is  now  scarcely  necessary.  The  idea 
of  a  man  growing  richer  by  mere  inaction  and  at  the 
expense  of  an  impoverished  debtor  is  profoundly 
distasteful  to  Utopian  ideas,  and  our  State  insists 
pretty  effectually  now  upon  the  participation  of  the 
lender  in  the  borrower's  risks.  This,  however,  is 
only  one  part  of  a  series  of  limitations  of  the  same 
character.  It  is  felt  that  to  buy  simply  in  order  to 
sell  again  brings  out  many  unsocial  human  qualities; 
it  makes  a  man  seek  to  enhance  profits  and  falsify 
values,  and  so  the  samurai  are  forbidden  to  buy  of 


Of  General  Conduct  181 

sell  on  their  own  account  or  for  any  employer  save 
the  State,  unless  by  some  process  of  manufacture 
they  change  the  nature  of  the  commodity  (a  mere 
change  in  bulk  or  packing  does  not  suffice)  and  they 
are  forbidden  salesmanship  and  all  its  arts.  Nor 
may  the  samurai  do  personal  services,  except  in  the 
matter  of  medicine  or  surgery;  they  may  not  be 
barbers,  for  example,  nor  inn  waiters  nor  boot 
cleaners.  But  nowadays  we  have  scarcely  any 
barbers  or  boot  cleaners;  men  do  these  things  for 
themselves.  Nor  may  a  man  under  the  Rule  be 
any  man's  servant;  pledged  to  do  whatever  he  is  told. 
He  may  neither  be  a  servant  nor  keep  one;  he  must 
shave  and  dress  and  serve  himself,  carry  his  own 
food  from  the  helper's  place,  redd  his  sleeping  room 
and  leave  it  clean.  ..." 

Finally  came  the  things  they  had  to  do.     Their 
Rule  contained. 

"many  precise  directions  regarding  his  health  and 
rules  that  would  aim  at  once  at  health  and  that 
constant  exercise  of  will  that  makes  life  good.  Save 
in  specified  exceptional  circumstances,  the  samurai 
must  bathe  in  cold  water  and  the  men  must  shave 
every  day;  they  have  the  precisest  directions  in  such 
matters;  the  body  must  be  in  health,  the  skin  and 
nerves  and  muscles  in  perfect  tone  or  the  samurai 
must  go  to  the  doctors  of  the  order  and  give  im- 
plicit obedience  to  the  regimen  prescribed.  They 
must  sleep  alone  at  least  four  nights  in  five ;  and  they 
must  eat  with  and  talk  to  anyone  in  their  fellowship 
who  cares  for  their  conversation  for  an  hour  at  least, 
at  the   nearest   club-house   of  the  samurai  once  on 


1 82  First  and  Last  Things 

three  chosen  days  in  every  week.  Moreover  they 
must  read  aloud  from  the  Book  of  the  Samurai  for 
at  least  five  minutes  every  day.  Every  month  they 
must  buy  and  read  faithfully  through  at  least  one 
book  that  has  been  published  during  the  past  five 
years,  and  the  only  intervention  with  private  choice 
in  that  matter  is  the  prescription  of  a  certain  minimum 
of  length  for  the  monthly  book  or  books.  But  the 
full  rule  in  these  minor  compulsory  matters  is  vo- 
luminous and  detailed,  and  it  abounds  with  alter- 
natives. Its  aim  is  rather  to  keep  before  the  samurai 
by  a  number  of  sample  duties,  as  it  were,  the  need 
of  and  some  of  the  chief  methods  towards  health 
of  body  and  mind  rather  than  to  provide  a  com- 
prehensive rule,  and  to  ensure  the  maintenance 
of  a  community  of  feeling  and  interests  among 
the  samurai  through  habit,  intercourse  and  a  living 
contemporary  literature.  These  minor  obligations 
do  not  earmark  more  than  an  hour  in  the  day,  yet 
they  serve  to  break  down  isolations  of  sympathy, 
all  sorts  of  physical  and  intellectual  sluggishness  and 
the  development  of  unsocial  preoccupations  of  many 
sorts.  .  .  . 

"So  far  as  the  samurai  have  a  purpose  in  common 
in  maintaining  the  State  and  the  order  and  discipline 
of  the  world,  so  far,  by  their  discipline  and  denial, 
by  their  public  work  and  effort,  they  worship  God 
together.  But  the  ultimate  fount  of  motives  lies 
in  the  individual  life,  it  lies  in  silent  and  deliberate 
reflections,  and  at  this,  the  most  striking  of  all  the 
rules  of  the  samurai  aims.  For  seven  consecutive 
days  in  the  year,  at  least,  each  man  or  woman  under 
the  Rule  must  go  right  out  of  all  the  life  of  men  into 
^ome  wild  and  solitary  place,  must  speak  to  no  man 


Of  General  Conduct  183 

or  woman  and  have  no  sort  of  intercourse  with  man- 
kind. They  must  go  bookless  and  weaponless, 
without  pen  or  paper  or  money.  Provision  must  be 
taken  for  the  period  of  the  journey,  a  rug  or  sleeping- 
sack — for  they  must  sleep  under  the  open  sky — but 
no  means  of  making  a  fire.  They  may  study  maps 
before  to  guide  them,  showing  any  difficulties  and 
dangers  in  the  journey,  but  they  may  not  carry  such 
helps.  They  must  not  go  by  beaten  ways  or  wherever 
there  are  inhabited  houses,  but  into  the  bare,  quiet 
places  of  the  globe — the  regions  set  apart  for 
them. 

"This  discipline  was  invented  to  secure  a  certain 
stoutness  of  heart  and  body  in  the  samurai.  Other- 
wise the  order  might  have  lain  open  to  too  many  tim- 
orous, merely  abstemious  men  and  women.  Many 
things  had  been  suggested,  sword-play  and  tests 
that  verged  on  torture,  climbing  in  giddy  places 
and  the  like,  before  this  was  chosen.  Partly,  it  is 
to  ensure  good  training  and  sturdiness  of  body  and 
mind,  but  partly  also,  it  is  to  draw  the  minds  of  the 
Samurai  for  a  space  from  the  insistent  details  of 
life,  from  the  intricate  arguments  and  the  fretting 
effort  to  work,  from  personal  quarrels  and  personal 
affections  and  the  things  of  the  heated  room.  Out 
they  must  go,  clean  out  of  the  world.  ..." 

These  passages  will  at  least  serve  to  present 
the  samurai  idea  and  the  idea  of  common  Rule 
of  conduct  it  embodied. 

In  the  Modern  Utopia  I  discuss  also  a  lesser 
Rule  and  the  modification  of  the  Rule  for  women 


184  First  and  Last  Things 

and  the  relation  to  the  order  of  what  I  call  the 
poietic  types,  those  types  whose  business  in  life 
seems  to  be  rather  to  experience  and  express 
than  to  act  and  effectually  do.  For  those  things 
I  must  refer  the  reader  to  the  book  itself.  To- 
gether with  a  sentence  I  have  put  in  italics  above, 
they  serve  to  show  that  even  when  I  was  devising 
those  samurai,  I  was  not  unmindful  of  the  defects 
that  are  essential  to  such  a  scheme. 

This  dream  of  the  samurai  proved  attractive 
to  a  much  more  various  group  of  readers  than 
the  New  Republican  suggestion,  and  there  have 
been  actual  attempts  to  realise  the  way  of  life 
proposed.  In  most  of  these  cases  there  was  mani- 
fest a  disposition  greatly  to  overaccentuate  organ- 
isation, to  make  too  much  of  the  disciplinary  side 
of  the  Rule  and  to  forget  the  entire  subordination 
of  such  things  to  active  thought  and  constructive 
effort.  They  are  valuable  and  indeed  only  justi- 
fiable as  a  means  to  an  end.  These  attempts  of 
a  number  of  people  of  very  miscellaneous  origins 
and  social  traditions  to  come  together  and  work 
like  one  machine  made  the  essential  wastefulness 
of  any  terrestrial  realisation  of  my  samurai  very 
clear.  The  only  reason  for  such  an  Order  is  the 
economy  and  development  of  force,  and  under 
existing    conditions    disciplines    would    consume 


Of  General  Conduct  185 

more  force  than  they  would  engender.  The 
Order  so  far  from  being  a  power  would  be  an 
isolation.  Manifestly  the  elements  of  organisa- 
tion and  uniformity  were  overdone  in  my  Utopia ; 
in  this  matter  I  was  nearer  the  truth  in  the  case 
of  my  New  Republicans.  These,  in  contrast 
with  the  samurai,  had  no  formal  general  organisa- 
tion, they  worked  for  a  common  end  because 
their  minds  and  the  suggestion  of  their  circum- 
stances pointed  them  to  a  common  end.  Nothing 
was  enforced  upon  them  in  the  way  of  observance 
or  discipline.  They  were  not  shepherded  and 
trained  together,  they  came  together.  It  was 
assumed  that  if  they  wanted  strongly  they  would 
see  to  it  that  they  lived  in  the  manner  most 
conducive  to  their  end  just  as  in  all  this  book  I 
am  taking  it  for  granted  that  to  believe  truly  is 
to  want  to  do  right.  It  was  not  even  required  of 
them  that  they  should  sedulously  propagate  their 
constructive  idea. 

Apart  from  the  illumination  of  my  ideas  by 
these  experiments  and  proposals,  my  Samurai  idea 
has  also  had  a  quite  unmerited  amount  of  subtle 
and  able  criticism  from  people  who  found  it  at 
once  interesting  and  antipathetic.  My  friends 
Vernon  Lee  and  G.  K.  Chesterton,  for  example, 
have  criticised  it,  and  I  think  very  justly,  on  the 


1 86  First  and  Last  Things 

ground  that  the  invincible  tortuousness  of  human 
pride  and  class-feeling  would  inevitably  vitiate 
its  working.  All  its  disciplines  would  tend  to 
give  its  members  a  sense  of  distinctness,  would 
tend  to  syndicate  power  and  rob  it  of  any  inti- 
macy and  sympathy  with  those  outside  the 
Order.    .    .    . 

It  seems  to  me  now  that  anyone  who  shares  the 
faith  I  have  been  developing  in  this  book  will  see 
the  value  of  these  comments  and  recognise  that 
this  dream  is  a  dream;  the  samurai  are  just  one 
more  picture  of  the  Perfect  Knight,  an  ideal  of 
clean,  resolute  and  balanced  living.  They  may 
be  valuable  as  an  ideal  of  attitude  but  not  as  an 
ideal  of  organisation.  They  are  never  to  be  put, 
as  people  say,  upon  a  business  footing  and  made 
available  as  a  refuge  from  the  individual  problem. 

To  modernise  the  parable,  the  Believer  must 
not  only  not  bury  his  talent  but  he  must  not  bank 
it  with  an  organisation.  Each  Believer  must 
decide  for  himself  how  far  he  wants  to  be  kinetic 
or  efficient,  how  far  he  needs  a  stringent  rule  of 
conduct,  how  far  he  is  poietic  and  may  loiter  and 
adventure  among  the  coarse  and  dangerous  things 
of  life.  There  is  no  reason  why  one  should  not, 
and  there  is  every  reason  why  one  should,  discuss 
one's  personal   needs  and  habits  and  disciplines 


Of  General  Conduct  187 

and  elaborate  one's  way  of  life  with  those  about 
one,  and  form  perhaps  with  those  of  like  training 
and  congenial  temperament,  small  groups  for 
mutual  support.  That  sort  of  association  I  have 
already  discussed  in  the  previous  section.  With 
adolescent  people  in  particular  such  societies  are 
in  many  cases  an  almost  instinctive  necessity. 
There  is  no  reason  moreover  why  everyone  who 
is  lonely  should  not  seek  out  congenial  minds  and 
contrive  a  grouping  with  them.  All  mutual 
lovers  for  example  are  Orders  of  a  limited  mem- 
bership, many  married  couples  and  endless  cliques 
and  sets  are  that.  Such  small  and  natural  asso- 
ciations are  indeed  force-giving  Orders  because 
they  are  brought  together  by  a  common  innate 
disposition  out  of  a  possibility  of  mutual  assis- 
tance and  inspiration;  they  observe  a  Rule  that 
springs  up  and  not  a  Rule  imposed.  The  more 
of  such  groups  and  Orders  we  have  the  better.  I 
do  not  see  why  having  formed  themselves  they 
should  not  dispose  and  organise  themselves.  I 
believe  there  is  a  phase  somewhere  between  fifteen 
and  thirty,  in  the  life  of  nearly  everybody  when 
such  a  group  is  sought,  is  needed  and  would  be 
helpful  in  self-development  and  self-discovery. 
In  leagues  and  societies  for  specific  ends  too,  we 
must    all    participate.     But    the    order    of    the 


1 88  First  and  Last  Things 

samurai  as  a  great  progressive  force  controlling 
a  multitude  of  lives  right  down  to  their  intimate 
details  and  through  all  the  phases  of  personal 
development  is  a  thing  unrealisable.  To  seek 
to  realise  it  is  impatience.  True  brotherhood  is 
universal  brotherhood.  The  way  to  that  is  long 
and  toilsome,  but  it  is  a  way  that  permits  of  no 
such  energetic  short  cuts  as  this  militant  order 
of  my  dream  would  achieve. 


§  II. 

Concerning  New  Starts  and  New  Religions. 
— When  one  is  discussing  this  possible  formation 
of  cults  and  brotherhoods,  it  may  be  well  to  con- 
sider a  few  of  the  conditions  that  rule  such  human 
re-groupings.  We  live  in  the  world  as  it  is  and 
not  in  the  world  as  we  want  it  to  be,  that  is  the 
practical  rule  by  which  we  steer,  and  in  directing 
our  lives  we  must  constantly  consider  the  forces 
and  practicabilities  of  the  social  medium  in  which 
we  move. 

In  contemporary  life  the  existing  ties  are  so 

various  and  so  imperative  that  the  detachment 

necessary  as  a  preliminary  condition  to  such  new 

groupings  is  rarely  found.     This  is  not  a  period 

in  which  large  numbers  of  people  break  away 

early  and  completely  from  old  connexions.    Things 

change  less  catastrophically  than  once  they  did. 

More  particularly  is  there  less  driving  out  into 

the    wilderness.     There    is   less    heresy   hunting; 

persecution  is   frequently  reluctant   and  can  be 

evaded  by  slight  concessions.     The  world  as  a 

whole  is  less  harsh  and  emphatic  than  it  was. 

189 


190  First  and  Last  Things 

Customs  and  customary  attitudes  change  now- 
adays not  so  much  by  open,  defiant  and  revolu- 
tionary breaches  as  by  the  attrition  of  partial 
negligencies  and  new  glosses.  Innovating  people 
do  conform  to  current  usage,  albeit  they  conform 
unwillingly  and  imperfectly.  There  is  a  constant 
breaking  down  and  building  up  of  usage,  and  as 
a  consequence  a  lessened  need  of  wholesale  sub- 
stitutions. Human  methods  have  become  vivi- 
parous ;  the  New  nowadays  lives  for  a  time  in  the 
form  of  the  Old.  The  friend  I  quote  in  §  9  writes 
of  a  possible  sect  with  a  "religious  edifice"  and 
ritual  of  its  own,  a  new  religious  edifice  and  a 
new  ritual.  In  practice  I  doubt  whether  "real" 
people,  people  who  matter,  people  who  are  get- 
ting things  done  and  who  have  already  developed 
complex  associations,  can  afford  the  intensive 
readjustment  implied  in  such  a  new  grouping. 
It  would  mean  too  much  loss  of  time,  too  much 
loss  of  energy  and  attention,  too  much  sacrifice 
of  existing  co-operations. 

New  cults,  new  religions,  new  organisations  of 
all  sorts,  insisting  upon  their  novelty  and  differ- 
ence, are  most  prolific  and  most  successful  wher- 
ever there  is  an  abundant  supply  of  dissociated 
people,  where  movement  is  in  excess  of  delibera- 
tion  and    creeds    and    formulae    unyielding   and 


Of  General  Conduct  191 

unadaptable  because  they  are  unthinking.  In 
England,  for  example,  in  the  last  century  where 
social  conditions  have  been  comparatively  stable, 
discussion  good  and  abundant  and  internal  mi- 
gration small,  there  have  been  far  fewer  such 
developments  than  in  the  United  States  of  Amer- 
ica. In  England  toleration  has  become  an  insti- 
tution, and  where  Tory  and  Socialist,  Bishop 
and  Infidel  can  all  meet  at  the  same  dinner  table 
and  spend  an  agreeable  week-end  together,  there 
is  no  need  for  defensive  segregations.  In  such 
an  atmosphere  opinion  and  usage  change  and 
change  continually  but  not  dramatically  as  the 
results  of  separations  and  pitched  battles  but 
continuously  and  fluently  as  the  outcome  of  in- 
numerable personal  reactions.  America  on  the 
other  hand  because  of  its  material  preoccupations, 
because  of  the  dispersal  of  its  thinking  classes  over 
great  areas,  because  of  the  cruder  understand- 
ing of  its  more  heterogeneous  population  (which 
constantly  renders  hard  and  explicit  statement 
necessary),  means  its  creeds  much  more  literally 
and  is  at  once  more  experimental  and  less  com- 
promising and  tolerant.  It  is  there  if  anywhere 
that  new  Brotherhoods  and  new  creeds  will  con- 
tinue to  appear.  But  even  in  America  I  think 
the  trend  of  things  is  away  from  separations  and 


192  First  and  Last  Things 

segregations  and  new  starts,  and  towards  more  com- 
prehensive and  graduated  methods  of  development. 
New  Religions,  I  think,  appear  and  are  possible 
and  necessary  in  phases  of  social  disorganisation, 
in  phases  when  considerable  numbers  of  people 
are  detached  from  old  systems  of  direction  and 
unsettled  and  distressed.  So  at  any  rate  it  was 
Christianity  appeared,  in  a  strained  and  disturbed 
community,  in  the  clash  of  Roman  and  Oriental 
thought,  and  for  a  long  time  it  was  confined  to 
the  drifting  population  of  seaports  and  great 
cities  and  to  wealthy  virgins  and  widows,  reaching 
the  most  settled  and  most  adjusted  class,  the 
pagani  last  of  all  and  in  its  most  adaptable  forms. 
It  was  the  greatest  new  beginning  in  the  world's 
history,  and  the  wealth  of  political  and  literary 
and  social  and  artistic  traditions  it  abandoned 
had  subsequently  to  be  revived  and  assimilated 
to  it,  fragment  by  fragment  from  the  past  it  had 
submerged.  Now  I  do  not  see  that  the  world 
to-day  presents  any  fair  parallelism  to  that  sere 
age  of  stresses  in  whose  recasting  Christianity 
played  the  part  of  a  flux.  Ours  is  on  the  whole 
an  organising  and  synthetic  rather  than  a  dis- 
integrating phase  throughout  the  world.  Old 
institutions  are  neither  hard  nor  obstinate  to-day, 
and  the  immense  and  various  constructive  forces 


Of  General  Conduct  193 

at  work  are  saturated  now  with  the  conception  of 
evolution,  of  secular  progressive  development, 
as  opposed  to  the  revolutionary  idea.  Only  a 
very  vast  and  terrible  war  explosion  can,  I  think, 
change  this  state  of  affairs. 

This  conveys  in  general  terms,  at  least,  my 
interpretation  of  the  present  time,  and  it  is  in 
accordance  with  this  view  that  the  world  is  moving 
forward  as  a  whole  and  with  much  dispersed  and 
discrepant  rightness,  that  I  do  not  want  to  go 
apart  from  the  world  as  a  whole  into  any  smaller 
community  with  all  the  implication  of  an  exclu- 
sive possession  of  right  which  such  a  going  apart 
involves.  Put  to  the  test  of  my  own  Samurai  for 
example,  by  a  particularly  urgent  and  enthusiastic 
disciple,  I  found  I  did  not  in  the  least  want  to  be 
one  of  that  organisation,  that  it  only  expressed 
one  side  of  a  much  more  complex  self  than  its 
disciplines  permitted.  And  still  less  do  I  want 
to  hamper  the  play  of  my  thoughts  and  motives 
by  going  apart  into  the  particularism  of  a  New 
Religion.  Such  refuges  are  well  enough  when  the 
times  threaten  to  overwhelm  one.  The  point  about 
the  present  age,  so  far  as  I  am  able  to  judge  the 
world,  is  that  it  does  not  threaten  to  overwhelm, 
that  at  the  worst,  by  my  standards,  it  maintains  its 
way  of  thinking  instead  of  assimilating  mine. 

X3 


§  12. 

The  Idea  of  the  Church. — Now  all  this  leads 
very  directly  to  a  discussion  of  the  relations  of 
a  person  of  my  way  of  thinking  to  the  Church 
and  religious  institutions  generally.  I  have  al- 
ready discussed  my  relation  to  commonly  ac- 
cepted beliefs,  but  the  question  of  institutions  is, 
it  seems  to  me,  a  different  one  altogether.  Not 
to  realise  that,  to  confuse  a  church  with  its 
creed,  is  to  prepare  the  ground  for  a  mass  of 
disastrous  and  life-wasting  errors. 

Now  my  rules  of  conduct  are  based  on  the 
supposition  that  moral  decisions  are  to  be  deter- 
mined by  the  belief  that  the  individual  life  guided 
by  its  perception  of  beauty  is  incidental,  experi- 
mental and  contributory  to  the  undying  life  of 
the  blood  and  race.  I  have  decided  for  myself 
that  the  general  business  of  life  is  the  develop- 
ment of  a  collective  consciousness  and  will  and 
purpose  out  of  a  chaos  of  individual  conscious- 
nesses and  wills  and  purposes,  and  that  the  way 
to  that  is  through  the  development  of  the  So- 
cialist State,  through  the  socialisation  of  existing 

194 


Of  General  Conduct  195 

State  organisations  and  their  merger  or  pacific 
association  in  a  world  state.  But  so  far  I  have 
not  taken  up  the  collateral  aspect  of  the  synthesis 
of  human  consciousness,  the  development  of 
collective  feeling  and  willing  and  expression  in 
the  form,  among  others,  of  religious  institutions. 
Religious  institutions  are  things  to  be  legiti- 
mately distinguished  from  the  creeds  and  cos- 
mogonies with  which  one  finds  them  associated. 
Customs  are  far  more  enduring  things  than  ideas, 
witness  the  misletoe  at  Christmas  or  the  old  lady 
turning  her  money  in  her  pocket  at  the  sight  of 
the  new  moon.  And  the  exact  origin  of  a  religious 
institution  is  of  much  less  significance  to  us  than 
its  present  effect.  The  theory  of  a  religion  may 
propose  the  attainment  of  Nirvana  or  the  propitia- 
tion of  an  irascible  Deity  or  a  dozen  other  things 
as  its  end  and  aim,  the  practical  fact  is  that  it 
draws  together  great  multitudes  of  diverse  in- 
dividualised people  in  a  common  solemnity  and 
self -subordination  however  vague,  and  is  so  far 
like  the  State,  and  in  a  manner  far  more  intimate 
and  emotional  and  fundamental  than  the  State, 
a  synthetic  power.  And  in  particular,  the  idea 
of  the  Catholic  Church  is  charged  with  synthetic 
suggestion  \  it  is  in  many  ways  an  idea  broader 
and  finer  than  the  constructive  idea  of  any  existing 


196  First  and  Last  Things 

state.  And  just  as  the  Beliefs  I  have  adopted  lead 
me  to  regard  myself  as  in  and  of  the  existing  state, 
such  as  it  is,  and  working  for  its  rectification 
and  development,  so  I  think  there  is  a  reasonable 
case  for  considering  oneself  in  and  of  the  Catholic 
Church  and  bound  to  work  for  its  rectification 
and  development.  And  this  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  one  may  not  feel  justified  in  calling  oneself 
a  Christian  in  any  sense  of  the  term. 

It  may  be  maintained  very  plausibly  that  the 
Catholic  Church  is  something  greater  than  Christ- 
ianity, however  much  the  Christians  may  have 
contributed  to  its  making.  From  the  historical 
point  of  view  it  is  a  religious  and  social  method 
that  developed  with  the  later  development  of  the 
world  empire  of  Rome  and  as  the  expression  of 
its  moral  and  spiritual  side.  Its  head  was  and 
so  far  as  its  main  body  is  concerned  still  is,  the 
pontifex  maximus  of  the  Roman  world  empire,  an 
official  who  was  performing  sacrifices  centuries 
before  Christ  was  born.  It  is  easy  to  assert  that 
the  Empire  was  converted  to  Christianity  and 
submitted  to  its  terrestrial  leader,  the  bishop  of 
Rome;  it  is  quite  equally  plausible  to  say  that 
the  religious  organisation  of  the  Empire  adopted 
Christianity  and  so  made  Rome,  which  had  hith- 
erto had  no  priority  over  Jerusalem  or  Antioch  ia 


Of  General  Conduct  197 

the  Christian  Church  the  headquarters  of  the 
adopted  cult.  And  if  the  Christian  movement 
could  take  over  and  assimilate  the  prestige,  the 
world  predominance  and  sacrificial  conception  of 
the  pontifex  maximus  and  go  on  with  that  as  part 
at  any  rate  of  the  basis  of  a  universal  church,  it 
is  manifest  that  now  in  the  fulness  of  time,  this 
great  organisation,  after  its  accumulation  of 
Christian  tradition,  may  conceivably  go  on  still 
further  to  alter  and  broaden  its  teaching  and 
observances  and  formulae. 

In  a  sense  no  doubt  all  we  moderns  are  bound 
to  consider  ourselves  children  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  albeit  critical  and  innovating  children 
with  a  tendency  rather  to  hark  back  to  our  Greek 
grandparents;  we  cannot  detach  ourselves  abso- 
lutely from  the  church  without  at  the  same  time 
detaching  ourselves  from  the  main  process  of 
spiritual  synthesis  that  has  made  us  what  we  are. 
And  there  is  a  strong  case  for  supposing  that  not 
only  is  this  reasonable  for  us  who  live  in  the 
tradition  of  Western  Europe,  but  that  wTe  are 
legitimately  entitled  to  call  upon  extra-European 
peoples  to  join  with  us  in  that  attitude  of  filiation 
to  the  Catholic  Church  since,  outside  it,  there  is  no 
organisation  whatever  aiming  at  a  religious  catho- 
licity and  professing  or  attempting  to  formulate 


198  First  and  Last  Things 

a  collective  religious  consciousness  in  the  world. 
So  far  as  they  come  to  a  conception  of  a  human 
synthesis  they  come  to  it  by  coming  into  our 
tradition. 

I  write  here  of  the  Catholic  Church  as  an  idea. 
To  come  from  that  idea  to  the  world  of  present 
realities  is  to  come  to  a  tangle  of  difficulties.  Is 
the  Catholic  Church  merely  the  Roman  commun- 
ion or  does  it  include  the  Greek  and  Protestant 
Churches?  Some  of  these  bodies  are  declaredly 
dissentient,  some  claim  to  be  integral  portions 
of  the  Catholic  Church  which  have  protested 
against  and  abandoned  certain  errors  of  the 
central  organisation.  I  admit  it  becomes  a  very 
confusing  riddle  in  such  a  country  as  England  to 
determine  which  is  the  Catholic  Church;  whether 
it  is  the  body  which  possesses  and  administers 
Canterbury  Cathedral  and  Westminster  Abbey, 
or  the  bodies  claiming  to  represent  purer  and 
finer  or  more  authentic  and  authoritative  forms 
of  Catholic  teaching  which  have  erected  that  new 
Byzantine-looking  cathedral  in  Westminster,  or 
Whitefield's  Tabernacle  in  the  Tottenham  Court 
Road,  or  a  hundred  or  so  other  organised  and  inde- 
pendent bodies.  It  is  still  more  perplexing  to  settle 
upon  the  Catholic  Church  in  America  among  an 
immense  confusion  of  sectarian  fragments. 


Of  General  Conduct  199 

Many  people,  I  know,  take  refuge  from  the 
struggle  with  this  tangle  of  controversies  by  re- 
fusing to  recognise  any  institutions  whatever  as 
representing  the  Church.  They  assume  a  mystical 
Church  made  up  of  all  true  believers,  of  all  men 
and  women  of  good  intent,  whatever  their  formulae 
or  connexion.  Wherever  there  is  worship,  there, 
they  say,  is  a  fragment  of  the  Church.  All  and 
none  of  these  bodies  are  the  true  Church. 

This  is  profoundly  true  no  doubt.  It  gives 
something  like  a  working  assumption  for  the  needs 
of  the  present  time.  People  can  get  along  upon 
that.  But  it  does  not  exhaust  the  question.  We 
seek  a  real  and  understanding  synthesis.  We 
want  a  real  collectivism,  not  a  poetical  idea;  a 
means  whereby  men  and  women  of  all  sorts,  all 
kinds  of  humanity,  may  pray  together,  sing  to- 
gether, stand  side  by  side,  feel  the  same  wave  of 
emotion,  develop  a  collective  being.  No  doubt 
right-spirited  men  are  praying  now  at  a  thousand 
discrepant  altars.  But  for  the  most  part  those 
who  pray  imagine  those  others  who  do  not  pray 
beside  them  are  in  error,  they  do  not  know  their 
common  brotherhood  and  salvation.  Their  bro- 
therhood is  marked  by  unanalysable  differences; 
theirs  is  a  dispersed  collectivism;  their  churches 
are    only    a    little    more    extensive    than    their 


200  First  and  Last  Things 

individualities  and  intenser  in  the;r  collective 
separations. 

The  true  Church  towards  which  my  own 
thoughts  tend  will  be  the  conscious  illuminated 
expression  of  Catholic  brotherhood.  It  must,  I 
think,  develop  out  of  the  existing  medley  of 
Church  fragments  and  out  of  all  that  is  worthy 
in  our  poetry  and  literature,  just  as  the  world- 
wide Socialist  State  at  which  I  aim  must  develop 
out  of  such  state  and  casual  economic  organisa- 
tions and  constructive  movements  as  exist  to- 
day. There  is  no  "beginning  again"  in  these 
things.  In  neither  case  will  going  apart  out  of 
existing  organisations  secure  our  ends.  Out  of 
what  is,  we  have  to  develop  what  has  to  be.  To 
work  for  the  Reformation  of  the  Catholic  Church 
is  an  integral  part  of  the  duty  of  a  believer. 

It  is  curious  how  misleading  a  word  can  be. 
We  speak  of  a  certain  phase  in  the  history  of 
Christianity  as  the  Reformation,  and  that  word 
effectually  conceals  from  most  people  the  simple 
indisputable  fact  that  there  has  been  no  Reforma- 
tion. There  was  an  attempt  at  a  Reformation 
in  the  Catholic  Church,  and  through  a  variety 
of  causes  it  failed.  It  detached  great  masses 
from  the  Catholic  Church  and  left  that  organisa- 
tion impoverished  intellectually  and  spiritually, 


Of  General  Conduct  201 

but  it  achieved  no  reconstruction  at  all.  It 
achieved  no  reconstruction  because  the  movement 
as  a  whole  lacked  an  adequate  grasp  of  one  funda- 
mentally necessary  idea,  the  idea  of  Catholicity. 
It  fell  into  particularism  and  failed.  It  set  up  a 
vast  process  of  fragmentation  among  Christian 
associations.  It  drove  huge  fissures  through  the 
once  common  platform.  In  innumerable  cases 
they  were  fissures  of  organisation  and  prejudice 
rather  than  real  differences  in  belief  and  mental 
habit.  Sometimes  it  was  manifestly  conflicting 
material  interests  that  made  the  split.  People 
are  now  divided  by  forgotten  points  of  difference, 
by  sides  taken  by  their  predecessors  in  the  dis- 
putes of  the  sixteenth  century,  by  mere  sectarian 
names  and  the  walls  of  separate  meeting  places. 
In  the  present  time  as  a  result  of  the  dissenting 
method,  there  are  multitudes  of  believing  men 
scattered  quite  solitarily  through  the  world. 

The  Reformation,  the  Reconstruction  of  the 
Catholic  Church  lies  still  before  us.  It  is  a  neces- 
sary wTork.  It  is  a  work  strictly  parallel  to  the 
reformation  and  expansion  of  the  organised  State. 
Together  these  processes  constitute  the  general 
duty  before  mankind. 


§  13- 

Of  Secession. — The  whole  trend  of  my  thought 
in  matters  of  conduct  is  against  whatever  ac- 
centuates one's  individual  separation  from  the 
collective  consciousness.  It  follows  naturally 
from  my  fundamental  creed  that  avoidable 
silences  and  secrecy  are  sins,  just  as  abstinences 
are  in  themselves  sins  rather  than  virtues.  And 
so  I  think  that  to  leave  any  organisation  or  human 
association  except  for  a  wider  and  larger  associa- 
tion, to  detach  oneself  in  order  to  go  alone,  or  to 
go  apart  narrowly  with  just  a  fewT,  is  fragmenta- 
tion and  sin.  Even  if  one  disagrees  with  the  pro- 
fessions or  formulae  or  usages  of  an  association, 
one  should  be  sure  that  the  disagreement  is  suffi- 
ciently profound  to  justify  one's  secession,  and 
in  any  case  of  doubt,  one  should  remain. 

No  profession  of  faith,  no  formula,  no  usage 
can  be  perfect.  It  is  only  required  that  it  should 
be  possible.  More  particularly  does  this  apply 
to  churches  and  religious  organisations.  There 
never  was  a  creed  nor  a  religious  declaration  but 
admitted  of  a  wide  variety  of  interpretations  and 

202 


Of  General  Conduct  203 

implied  both  more  and  less  than  it  expressed. 
The  pedantically  conscientious  man,  in  his  search 
for  an  unblemished  religious  brotherhood,  tends 
always  to  a  solitude  of  universal  dissent. 

In  the  religious,  as  in  the  economic,  sphere  one 
must  not  look  for  perfect  conditions.  Setting  up 
for  oneself  in  a  new  sect  is  like  founding  Utopian 
settlements  in  Paraguay,  an  evasion  of  the  essential 
question;  our  real  business  is  to  take  what  we 
have,  live  in  and  by  it,  use  it  and  do  our  best  to 
better  such  faults  as  are  manifest  to  us,  in  the 
direction  of  a  wider  and  nobler  organisation.  If 
you  do  not  agree  with  the  church  in  which  you 
find  yourself,  your  best  course  is  to  become  a  re- 
former in  that  church,  to  declare  it  a  detached 
forgetful  part  of  the  greater  church  that  ought 
to  be,  just  as  your  State  is  a  detached  unawakened 
part  of  the  World  State.  You  take  it  as  what  it 
is  and  try  and  broaden  it  towards  reunion.  It 
is  only  when  secession  is  absolutely  unavoidable 
that  it  is  right  to  secede. 

This  is  particularly  true  of  state  churches  such 
as  is  the  Church  of  England.  These  are  bodies 
constituted  by  the  national  law  and  amenable 
to  the  collective  will.  I  do  not  think  a  man  should 
consider  himself  excluded  from  them  because 
they  have  Articles  of  Religion  to  which  he  cannot 


204  First  and  Last  Things 

subscribe  and  Creeds  he  will  not  say.  A  National 
State  Church  has  no  right  to  be  thus  limited  and 
exclusive.  Rather  then  let  any  man,  just  to  the 
very  limit  that  is  possible  for  his  intellectual  or 
moral  temperament,  remain  in  his  Church  to 
redress  the  balance  and  do  his  utmost  to  change 
and  broaden  it. 

But  perhaps  the  church  will  not  endure  a  broad- 
minded  man  in  its  body,  speaking  and  reforming, 
and  will  expel  him? 

Be  expelled — well  and  good!  That  is  alto- 
gether different.  Let  them  expel  you,  struggling 
valiantly,  and  resolved  to  return  so  soon  as  they 
release  you  to  hammer  at  the  door.  But  with- 
drawing— sulking — going  off  in  a  serene  huff  to 
live  by  yourself  spiritually  and  materially  in  your 
own  way — that  is  voluntary  damnation,  the  de- 
nial of  the  Brotherhood  of  Man.  Be  a  rebel  or 
a  revolutionary  to  your  heart's  content,  but  a 
mere  seceder  never. 

For  otherwise  it  is  manifest  that  we  shall  have 
to  pay  for  each  step  of  moral  and  intellectual 
progress  with  a  fresh  start,  with  a  conflict  between 
the  new  organisation  and  the  old  from  which  it 
sprang,  a  perpetually  recurring  parricide.  There 
will  be  a  series  of  religious  institutions  in  develop- 
ing order,  each  containing  the  remnant  too  dull  or 


Of  General  Conduct  205 

too  hypocritical  to  secede  at  the  time  of  stress 
that  began  the  new  body.  Something  of  the 
sort  has  indeed  happened  to  both  the  Catholic 
and  English  protestant  churches.  We  have  the 
intellectual  and  moral  guidance  of  the  people 
falling  more  and  more  into  the  hands  of  an  in- 
formal Church  of  morally  impassioned  leaders, 
writers,  speakers  and  the  like,  while  the  beautiful 
cathedrals  in  which  their  predecessors  sheltered, 
fall  more  and  more  into  the  hands  of  an  unin- 
spiring, retrogressive  but  conforming  clergy. 

Now  this  was  all  very  well  for  the  Individualist 
Liberal  of  the  Early  Victorian  period,  but  In- 
dividualist Liberalism  was  a  more  destructive 
phase  in  the  process  of  renewing  the  old  Catholic 
order,  a  clearing  of  the  site.  We  Socialists  want 
a  Church  through  which  we  can  feel  and  think 
collectively,  as  much  as  we  want  a  State  that  we 
can  serve  and  be  served  by.  Whether  as  members 
or  external  critics  we  have  to  do  our  best  to  get 
rid  of  obsolete  doctrinal  and  ceremonial  barriers, 
so  that  the  churches  may  merge  again  in  a  uni- 
versal Church,  and  that  Church  comprehend  again 
the  whole  growing  and  amplifying  spiritual  life 
of  the  race. 

I  do  not  know  if  I  make  my  meaning  perfectly 
clear  here.     By  conformity  I  do  not  mean  silent 


206  First  and  Last  Things 

conformity.  It  is  a  man's  primary  duty  to  con- 
vey his  individual  difference  to  the  minds  of  his 
fellow-men.  It  is  because  I  want  that  difference 
to  tell  to  the  utmost  that  I  suggest  he  should  not 
leave  the  assembly.  But  in  particular  instances 
he  may  find  it  more  striking  and  significant  to 
stand  out  and  speak  as  a  man  detached  from  the 
general  persuasion,  just  as  obstructed  and  em- 
barrassed ministers  of  State  can  best  serve  their 
country  at  times  by  resigning  office  and  appealing 
to  the  public  judgment  by  this  striking  and  sig- 
nificant act. 


§  14- 

A  Dilemma. — We  are  led  by  this  discussion  of 
secession  straight  between  the  horns  of  a  moral 
dilemma.  We  have  come  to  two  conclusions; 
to  secede  is  a  grave  sin,  but  to  lie  is  also  a  grave 
sin. 

But  often  the  practical  alternative  is  between 
futile  secession  or  implicit  or  actual  falsehood. 
It  has  been  the  instinct  of  the  aggressive  contro- 
versialist in  all  ages  to  seize  upon  collective  or- 
ganisations and  fence  them  about  with  oaths  and 
declarations  of  such  a  nature  as  to  bar  out  anyone 
not  of  his  own  way  of  thinking.  In  a  democracy, 
for  example,  to  take  an  extreme  caricature  of  our 
case,  a  triumphant  majority  in  power,  before 
allowing  anyone  to  vote,  might  impose  an  oath 
whereby  the  leader  of  the  minority  and  all  his 
aims  were  specifically  renounced.  And  if  no 
country  goes  so  far  as  that,  nearly  all  countries 
and  all  churches  make  some  such  restrictions  upon 
opinion.  The  United  States,  that  land  of  freedoms 
abandoned  and  seceding,  imposes  upon  everyone 

who  crosses  the  Atlantic  to  its  shores,  a  childish 

207 


208  First  and  Last  Things 

ineffectual  declaration  against  anarchy  and  poly- 
gamy. None  of  these  tests  exclude  the  unhesitat- 
ing liar,  but  they  do  bar  out  many  proud  and 
honest-minded  people.  They  "fix"  and  kill 
things  that  should  be  living  and  fluid;  they  are 
offences  against  the  mind  of  the  race.  How  is  a 
man  then  to  behave  towards  these  test  oaths  and 
affirmations,  towards  repeating  Creeds,  signing 
assent  to  Articles  of  Religion  and  the  like?  Do 
not  these  unavoidable  barriers  to  public  service, 
religious  work  and  the  like,  stand  on  a  special 
footing? 

Personally  I  think  they  do. 

I  think  that  in  most  cases  personal  isolation 
and  disuse  is  the  greater  evil.  I  think  if  there  is 
no  other  way  to  constructive  service  except 
through  test  oaths  and  declarations,  one  must 
take  them.  This  is  a  particular  case  that  stands 
apart  from  all  other  cases.  The  man  who  preaches 
a  sermon  and  pretends  therein  to  any  belief  he 
does  not  truly  hold  is  an  abominable  scoundrel, 
but  I  do  not  think  he  need  trouble  his  soul  very 
greatly  about  the  barrier  he  stepped  over  to  get 
into  the  pulpit,  if  he  felt  the  call  to  preach,  so  long 
as  the  preaching  be  honest.  A  Republican  who 
takes  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  King  and  wears 
his  uniform  is  in  a  similar  case.     These  things 


Of  General  Conduct  209 

stand  apart;  they  are  so  formal  as  to  be  scarcely 
more  reprehensible  than  the  falsehood  of  calling 
a  correspondent  "Dear"  or  asking  a  tiresome 
intruder  to  whom  one  is  being  kind  and  civil  for 
the  pleasure  of  his  company  to  lunch  or  dinner. 
We  ought  to  do  what  we  can  to  abolish  these 
absurd  barriers  and  petty  falsehoods,  but  we 
ought  not  to  commit  a  social  suicide  against 
them. 

That  is  how  I  think  and  feel  in  this  matter,  but 
if  a  man  sees  the  matter  more  gravely,  if  his  con- 
science tells  him  relentlessly  and  uncompro- 
misingly, "this  is  a  lie,"  then  it  is  a  lie  and  he 
must  not  be  guilty  of  it.  But  then  I  think  it  ill 
becomes  him  to  be  silently  excluded.  His  work 
is  to  clamour  against  the  existence  of  the  barrier 
that  wastes  him. 

I  do  not  see  that  lying  itself  is  a  fundamental 
sin.  In  the  first  place  some  lying,  that  is  to  say 
some  unavoidable  inaccuracy  of  statement  is 
necessary  to  nearly  everything  we  do,  and  the 
truest  statement  becomes  false  if  we  forget  or 
alter  the  angle  at  which  it  is  made,  the  direction 
in  which  it  points.  In  the  next  the  really  funda- 
mental and  most  generalised  sin  is  self -isolation. 
Lying  is  a  sin  only  because  self -isolation  is  a  sin, 
because  it  is  an  effectual  way  of  cutting  oneself 


210  First  and  Last  Things 

off  from  human  co-operation.  That  is  why  there 
is  no  sin  in  telling  a  fairy  tale  to  a  child.  But 
telling  the  truth  when  it  will  be  misunderstood  is 
no  whit  better  than  lying,  and  silences  are  often 
blacker  than  any  lies.  I  class  secrets  with  lies 
and  cannot  comprehend  the  moral  standards 
that  exonerate  secrecy  in  human  affairs. 

To  all  these  things  one  must  bring  a  personal 
conscience  and  be  prepared  to  examine  particular 
cases.  The  excuses  I  have  made,  for  example, 
for  a  very  broad  churchman  to  stay  in  the  Church 
might  very  well  be  twisted  into  an  excuse  for 
professing  faith  in  something  one  did  not  to 
the  slightest  extent  believe  in  order  to  enter  and 
betray  some  organisation  to  which  one  was  vio- 
lently hostile.  I  admit  that  there  may  be  every 
gradation  between  these  two  things.  The  in- 
dividual must  examine  his  special  case  and  weigh 
the  element  of  treachery  against  the  possibility 
of  co-operation.  I  do  not  see  how  there  can  be 
a  general  rule.  I  have  already  shown  why  in 
my  own  case  I  hesitate  to  profess  a  belief  in  God 
because  I  think  the  misleading  element  in  that 
profession  would  outweigh  the  advantage  of  sym- 
pathy and  confidence  gained. 


§  is- 

A  Comment. — The  preceding  section  has  been 
criticised  by  a  friend  who  writes: 

"In  religious  matters  apparent  assent  produces 
false  unanimity.  There  is  no  convention  about 
these  things;  if  there  were  they  would  not  exist. 
On  the  contrary,  the  only  way  to  get  perfunctory 
tests  and  so  forth  abrogated,  is  for  a  sufficient 
number  of  people  to  refuse  to  take  them.  It  is 
in  this  case  as  in  every  other ;  secession  is  the  be- 
ginning of  a  new  integration.  The  living  elements 
leave  the  dead  or  dying  form  and  gradually  create 
in  virtue  of  their  own  combinations  a  new  form 
more  suited  to  present  things.  There  is  a  forma- 
tive, a  creative  power  in  sincerity,  and  also  in 
segregation  itself.  And  the  new  form,  the  new 
species  produced  by  variation  and  segregation 
will  measure  itself  and  its  qualities  with  the  old 
one.  The  old  one  will  either  go  to  the  wall, 
accept  the  new  one  and  be  renewed  by  it,  or  the 
new  one  will  itself  be  pushed  out  of  existence  if 
the  old  one  has  more  vitality  and  is  better  adapted 
to  the  circumstances.     This  process  of  variation, 


211 


212  First  and  Last  Things 

competition  and  selection,  also  of  intermarriage 
between  equally  vital  and  equally  adapted  varie- 
ties, is  after  all  the  process  by  which  not  only 
races  exist  but  all  human  thoughts." 

So  my  friend,  who  I  think  is  altogether  too 
strongly  swayed  by  biological  analogies.  But  I 
am  thinking  not  of  the  assertion  of  opinions  pri- 
marily but  of  co-operation  with  an  organisation 
within  which,  save  for  the  matter  of  the  test,  one 
may  agree.  Secession  may  not  involve  the  de- 
velopment of  a  new  and  better  moral  organisation ; 
it  may  simply  mean  the  suicide  of  one's  public 
aspect.  There  may  be  no  room  or  no  need  of  a 
rival  organisation.  To  secede  from  state  employ- 
ment for  example  is  not  to  create  the  beginnings 
of  a  new  state  however  many — short  of  a  revolu- 
tion— may  secede  with  you.  It  is  to  become  a 
disconnected  private  person  and  throw  up  one's 
social  side. 


§i6 


War. — I  do  not  think  a  discussion  of  a  man's 
social  relations  can  be  considered  at  all  complete 
or  satisfactory  until  we  have  gone  into  the  ques- 
tion of  military  service.  To-day,  in  an  increasing 
number  of  countries,  military  service  is  an  essen- 
tial part  of  citizenship  and  the  prospect  of  war 
lies  like  a  great  shadow  across  the  whole  bright 
complex  prospect  of  human  affairs.  What  should 
be  the  attitude  of  a  right-living  man  towards 
his  state  at  war  and  to  warlike  preparations? 

In    no    other    connexion    are    the    confusions 

and    uncertainty    of    the    contemporary    mind 

more  manifest.     It  is  an  odd  contradiction  that 

in  Great  Britain  and  Western  Europe  generally, 

just    those    parties    that    stand    most    distinctly 

for  personal  devotion  to  the  State  in  economic 

matters,    the    Socialist    and    Socialistic    parties, 

are  most  opposed  to  the  idea  of  military  service, 

and   just    those    parties   that   defend    individual 

self-seeking  and  social  disloyalty  in   the  sphere 

of   property,    are   most   urgent   for   conscription. 

No  doubt  some  of  this  uncertainty  is  due  to  the 

213 


214  First  and  Last  Things 

mixing  in  of  private  interests  with  public  pro- 
fessions, but  much  more  is  it,  I  think,  the  result 
of  mere  muddle-headedness  and  an  insufficient 
grasp  of  the  implications  of  the  propositions 
under  discussion.  The  ordinary  political  So- 
cialist desires,  as  I  desire,  and  as  I  suppose  every 
sane  man  desires  as  an  ultimate  ideal,  universal 
peace,  the  merger  of  national  partitions  in  loy- 
alty to  the  World  State.  But  he  does  not  re- 
cognise that  the  way  to  reach  that  goal  is  not 
necessarily  by  minimising  and  specialising  war 
and  war  responsibility  at  the  present  time. 
There  he  falls  short  of  his  own  constructive 
conceptions  and  lapses  into  the  secessionist 
methods  of  the  earlier  Radicals.  We  have  here 
another  case  strictly  parallel  to  several  we  have 
already  considered.  War  is  a  collective  con- 
cern; to  turn  one's  back  upon  it,  to  refuse  to 
consider  it  as  a  possibility,  is  to  leave  it  entirely 
to  those  who  are  least  prepared  to  deal  with  it 
in  a  broad  spirit. 

In  many  ways  war  is  the  most  socialistic  of 
all  forces.  In  many  ways  military  organisation 
is  the  most  peaceful  of  activities.  When  the 
contemporary  man  steps  from  the  street  of  clam- 
orous insincere  advertisement,  push,  adultera- 
tion, underselling  and  intermittent  employment, 


Of  General  Conduct  2 1 5 

into  the  barrack-yard,  he  steps  on  to  a  higher 
social  plane,  into  an  atmosphere  of  service  and 
co-operation  and  of  infinitely  more  honourable 
emulations.  Here  at  least  men  are  not  flung 
out  of  employment  to  degenerate  because  there 
is  no  immediate  work  for  them  to  do.  They 
are  fed  and  drilled  and  trained  for  better  ser- 
vices. Here  at  least  a  man  is  supposed  to  win 
promotion  by  self-forgetfulness  and  not  by  self- 
seeking.  And  beside  the  feeble  and  irregular 
endowment  of  research  by  commercialism,  its 
little  short-sighted  snatches  at  profit  by  inno- 
vation and  scientific  economy,  see  how  remark- 
able is  the  steady  and  rapid  development  of 
method  and  appliances  in  naval  and  military 
affairs!  Nothing  is  more  striking  than  to  com- 
pare the  progress  of  civil  conveniences  which 
has  been  left  almost  entirely  to  the  trader,  to 
the  progress  in  military  apparatus  during  the 
last  few  decades.  The  house  appliances  of  to- 
day for  example,  are  little  better  than  they 
were  fifty  years  ago.  A  house  of  to-day  is  still 
almost  as  ill- ventilated,  badly  heated  by  waste- 
ful fires,  clumsily  arranged  and  furnished  as 
the  house  of  1858.  Houses  a  couple  of  hundred 
years  old  are  still  satisfactory  places  of  residence, 
so  little  have  our  standards  risen.     But  the  rifle 


216  First  and  Last  Things 

or  battleship  of  fifty  years  ago  was  beyond  all 
comparison  inferior  to  those  we  possess;  in 
power,  in  speed,  in  convenience  alike.  No  one 
has  a  use  now  for  such  superannuated  things. 


§  i7 


War  and  Competition. — What  is  the  mean- 
ing of  war  in  life? 

War  is  manifestly  not  a  thing  in  itself,  it  is 
something  correlated  with  the  whole  fabric  of 
human  life.  That  violence  and  killing  which 
between  animals  of  the  same  species  is  private 
and  individual  becomes  socialised  in  war.  It 
is  a  co-operation  for  killing  that  carries  with 
it  also  a  co-operation  for  saving  and  a  great 
development  of  mutual  help  and  development 
within  the  war-making  group. 

War,  it  seems  to  me,  is  really  the  elimination 
of  violent  competition  as  between  man  and 
man,  an  excretion  of  violence  from  the  develop- 
ing social  group.  Through  war  and  military 
organisation,  and  through  war  and  military 
organisation  only,  has  it  become  possible  to 
conceive  of  peace. 

This  violence  was  a  necessary  phase  in  human 
and  indeed  in  all  animal  development.  Among 
low  types  of  men  and  animals  it  seems  an  in- 
evitable condition  of  the  vigour  of  the  species 

217 


218  First  and  Last  Things 

and  the  beauty  of  life.  The  more  vital  and 
various  individual  must  lead  and  prevail,  leave 
progeny  and  make  the  major  contribution  to 
the  synthesis  of  the  race;  the  weaker  individual 
must  take  a  subservient  place  and  leave  no 
offspring.  That  means  in  practice  that  the 
former  must  directly  or  indirectly  kill  the  latter 
until  some  mitigated  but  equally  effectual  sub- 
stitute for  that  killing  is  invented.  That  duel 
disappears  from  life,  the  fight  of  the  beasts  for 
food  and  the  fight  of  the  bulls  for  the  cows,  only 
by  virtue  of  its  replacement  by  new  forms  of 
competition.  With  the  development  of  prim- 
itive war  we  have  such  a  replacement.  The 
competition  becomes  a  competition  to  serve 
and  rule  in  the  group,  the  stronger  take  the 
leadership  and  the  larger  share  of  life,  and  the 
weaker  co-operate  in  subordination,  they  waive 
and  compromise  the  conflict  and  use  their  con- 
joint strength  against  a  common  rival. 

Competition  is  a  necessary  condition  of  pro- 
gressive life.  I  do  not  know  if  so  far  I  have 
made  that  belief  sufficiently  clear  in  these  con- 
fessions. Perhaps  in  my  anxiety  to  convey 
my  idea  of  a  human  synthesis  I  have  not  suffi- 
ciently insisted  upon  the  part  played  by  com- 
petition in  that  synthesis.     But  the  implications 


Of  General  Conduct  219 

of  the  view  I  have  set  forth  are  fairly  plain. 
Every  individual,  I  have  stated,  is  an  experi- 
ment for  the  synthesis  of  the  species,  and  upon 
that  idea  my  system  of  conduct  so  far  as  it  is 
a  system  is  built.  Manifestly  the  individual's 
function  is  either  self -development,  service  and 
reproduction  or  failure  and  an  end. 

With  moral  and  intellectual  development  the 
desire  to  serve  and  participate  in  a  collective 
purpose  arises  to  control  the  blind  and  pas- 
sionate impulse  to  survival  and  reproduction 
that  the  struggle  of  life  has  given  us,  but  it  does 
not  abolish  the  fact  of  selection,  of  competition. 
I  contemplate  no  end  of  competition.  But  for 
competition  that  is  passionate,  egoistic  and 
limitless,  cruel,  clumsy  and  wasteful,  I  desire 
to  see  competition  that  is  controlled  and  fair- 
minded  and  devoted,  men  and  women  doing 
their  utmost  with  themselves  and  making  their 
utmost  contribution  to  the  specific  accumu- 
lation, but  in  the  end  content  to  abide  by  a 
verdict. 

The  whole  development  of  civilisation,  it 
seems  to  me,  consists  in  the  development  of 
adequate  tests  of  survival  and  of  an  intellectual 
and  moral  atmosphere  about  those  tests  so  that 
they    shall    be    neither    cruel    nor    wasteful.      If 


220  First  and  Last  Things 

the  test  is  not  to  be  "are  you  strong  enough  to 
kill  everyone  you  do  not  like?"  that  will  only  be 
because  it  will  ask  still  more  comprehensively 
and  with  regard  to  a  multitude  of  qualities  other 
than  brute-killing  power,  "are  you  adding  worth- 
ily to  the  synthesis  by  existence  and  survival?" 

I  am  very  clear  in  my  mind  on  this  perpetual 
need  of  competition.  I  admit  that  upon  that 
turns  the  practicability  of  all  the  great  series  of 
organising  schemes  that  are  called  Socialism. 
The  Socialist  scheme  must  show  a  system  in 
which  predominance  and  reproduction  are  cor- 
related with  the  quantity  and  amount  of  an 
individual's  social  contribution,  and  so  far  I 
acknowledge  it  is  only  in  the  most  general  terms 
that  this  can  be  claimed  as  done.  We  Socialists 
have  to  work  out  all  these  questions  far  more 
thoroughly  than  we  have  done  hitherto.  We 
owe  that  to  our  movement  and  the  world. 

It  is  no  adequate  answer  to  our  antagonists 
to  say,  indeed  it  is  a  mere  tu  quoque  to  say,  that 
the  existing  system  does  not  present  such  a 
correlation,  that  it  puts  a  premium  on  secretive- 
ness  and  self-seeking  and  a  discount  on  many 
most  necessary  forms  of  social  service.  That 
is  a  mere  temporary  argument  for  a  delay  in 
judgment. 


Of  General  Conduct  221 

The  whole  history  of  humanity  seems  to  me 
to  present  a  spectacle  of  this  organising  special- 
isation of  competition,  this  replacement  of  the 
indiscriminate  and  collectively  blind  struggle  for 
life  by  an  organised  and  collectively  intelligent 
development  of  life.  We  see  a  secular  replace- 
ment of  brute  conflict  by  the  law,  a  secular 
replacement  of  indiscriminate  brute  lust  by  mar- 
riage and  sexual  taboos,  and  now  with  the  develop- 
ment of  Socialistic  ideas  and  methods,  the  steady 
replacement  of  blind  industrial  competition  by 
public  economic  organisation.  As  moreover  there 
is  going  on  a  great  educational  process  bringing 
a  greater  and  greater  proportion  of  the  minds  of 
the  community  into  relations  of  understanding 
and  interchange. 

Just  as  this  process  of  organisation  proceeds, 
the  violent  and  chaotic  conflict  of  individuals 
and  presently  of  groups  of  individuals  disappears ; 
personal  violence,  private  war,  cutthroat  com- 
petition, local  war,  each  in  turn  is  replaced  by 
a  more  efficient  and  more  economical  method 
of  survival,  a  method  of  survival  giving  con- 
stantly and  selecting  always  more  accurately 
a  finer  type  of  survivor. 

I  might  compare  the  social  synthesis  to  crys- 
tals growing  out  of  a  fluid  matrix.     It  is  where 


222  First  and  Last  Things 

the  growing  order  of  the  crystals  has  as  yet  not 
spread  that  the  old  resource  to  destruction  and 
violent  personal  or  associated  acts  remains. 

But  this  metaphor  of  crystals  is  a  very  in- 
adequate one.  Because  crystals  have  no  will  in 
themselves ;  nor  do  crystals,  having  failed  to  grow 
in  some  particular  form,  presently  modify  that 
form  more  or  less  and  try  again.  I  see  the  or- 
ganising of  forces,  not  simply  law  and  police 
which  are  indeed  mere  paid  mercenaries  from 
the  region  of  violence,  but  legislation  and  litera- 
ture, teaching  and  tradition,  organised  religion, 
getting  themselves  and  the  social  structure 
together,  year  after  year  and  age  after  age, 
halting,  failing,  breaking  up  in  order  to  try  again. 
And  it  seems  to  me  that  the  amount  of  lawless- 
ness and  crime,  the  amount  of  waste  and  futility, 
the  amount  of  war  and  war  possibility  and  war 
danger  in  the  world  are  just  the  measure  of  the 
present  inadequacy  of  the  world's  system  of 
collective  organisations  to  the  Purpose  before 
them. 


§i8. 

Modern  War. — In  our  contemporary  world, 
in  our  particular  phase,  military  and  naval  or- 
ganisation loom  up,  colossal  and  unprecedented 
facts.  They  have  the  effect  of  an  overhanging 
disaster  that  grows  every  year  more  tremendous, 
every  year  in  more  sinister  contrast  with  the  in- 
creasing securities  and  tolerations  of  the  every- 
day life.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine  now  what 
a  great  war  in  Europe  would  be  like ;  the  change 
in  material  and  method  has  been  so  profound 
since  the  last  cycle  of  wars  ended  with  the  down- 
fall of  the  Third  Napoleon.  But  there  can  be 
little  or  no  doubt  that  it  would  involve  a  de- 
struction of  property  and  industrial  and  social 
disorganisation  of  the  most  monstrous  dimen- 
sions. No  man,  I  think,  can  mark  the  limits 
of  the  destruction  of  a  great  European  conflict 
were  it  to  occur  at  the  present  time,  and  the 
near  advent  of  practicable  flying  machines  opens 
a  whole  new  world  of  frightful  possibilities. 

For  my  own  part  I  can  imagine  that  a  col- 
lision  between    such    powers   as    Great   Britain, 

223 


224  First  and  Last  Things 

Germany  or  America,  might  very  well  involve 
nearly  every  other  power  in  the  world,  might 
shatter  the  whole  fabric  of  credit  upon  which 
our  present  system  of  economics  rests  and  put 
back  the  orderly  progress  of  social  construction 
for  a  vast  interval  of  time.  One  figures  great 
towns  red  with  destruction  while  giant  airships 
darken  the  sky,  one  pictures  the  crash  of  mighty 
ironclads,  the  bursting  of  tremendous  shells  fired 
from  beyond  the  range  of  sight  into  unprotected 
cities.  One  thinks  of  congested  ways  swarming 
with  desperate  fighters,  of  torrents  of  fugitives 
and  battles  gone  out  of  the  control  of  their  gen- 
erals into  unappeasable  slaughter.  There  is  a 
vision  of  interrupted  communications,  of  wrecked 
food  trains  and  sunken  food  ships,  of  vast  masses 
of  people  thrown  out  of  employment  and  darkly 
tumultuous  in  the  streets,  of  famine  and  famine- 
driven  rioters.  What  modern  population  will 
stand  a  famine?  For  the  first  time  in  the  his- 
tory of  warfare  the  rear  of  the  victor,  the  rear 
of  the  fighting  line  becomes  insecure,  assailable 
by  flying  machines  and  subject  to  unprecedented 
and  unimaginable  panics.  No  man  can  tell 
what  savagery  of  desperation  these  new  condi- 
tions may  not  release  in  the  soul  of  man.  A 
conspiracy    of    adverse    chances,    I    say,    might 


Of  General  Conduct  225 

contrive  so  great  a  cataclysm.  There  is.  no  effect- 
ual guarantee  that  it  could  not  occur. 

But  in  spite  of  that,  I  believe  that  on  the  whole 
there  is  far  more  good  than  evil  in  the  enormous 
military  growths  that  have  occurred  in  the  last 
half  century.  I  cannot  estimate  how  far  the 
alternative  to  war  is  lethargy.  It  is  through 
military  urgencies  alone  that  many  men  can 
be  brought  to  consent  to  the  collective  endow- 
ment of  research,  to  public  education  and  to 
a  thousand  interferences  with  their  private  self- 
seeking.  Just  as  the  pestilence  of  cholera  was 
necessary  before  men  could  be  brought  to  con- 
sent to  public  sanitation,  so  perhaps  the  dread 
of  foreign  violence  is  an  unavoidable  spur  in 
an  age  of  chaotic  industrial  production  in  order 
that  men  may  be  brought  to  subserve  the  growth 
of  a  State  whose  purpose  might  otherwise  be  too 
high  for  them  to  understand.  Men  must  be 
forced  to  care  for  fleets  and  armies  until  they 
have  learnt  to  value  cities  and  self-development 
and  a  beautiful  social  life. 

The  real  danger  of  modern  war  lies  not  in  the 
disciplined  power  of  the  fighting-machine  but 
in  the  undisciplined  forces  in  the  collective  mind 
that  may  set  that  machine  in  motion.  It  is 
not  that  our  guns  and  ships  are  marvellously 
is 


226  First  and  Last  Things 

good,  but  that  our  press  and  political  organisa- 
tions are  haphazard  growths  entirely  inferior 
to  them.  If  this  present  phase  of  civilisation 
should  end  in  a  debacle,  if  present  humanity 
finds  itself  beginning  again  at  a  lower  level  of 
organisation,  it  will  not  be  because  we  have 
developed  these  enormous  powers  of  destruction 
but  because  we  have  failed  to  develop  adequate 
powers  of  control  for  them  and  collective  de- 
termination. This  panoply  of  war  waits  as  the 
test  of  our  progress  towards  the  realisation  of 
that  collective  mind  which  I  hold  must  ulti- 
mately direct  the  evolution  of  our  specific  being. 
It  is  here  to  measure  our  incoherence  and  error, 
and  in  the  measure  of  those  defects  to  refer  us 
back  to  our  studies. 

Just  as  we  understand  does  war  become 
needless. 

But  I  do  not  think  that  war  and  military 
organisation  will  so  much  disappear  as  change 
its  nature  as  the  years  advance.  I  think  that 
the  phase  of  universal  military  service  we  seem 
to  be  approaching  is  one  through  which  the  mass 
of  mankind  may  have  to  pass,  learning  some- 
thing that  can  be  learnt  in  no  other  way,  that 
the  uniforms  and  flags,  the  conceptions  of  order 
and  discipline,  the  tradition  of  service  and  de- 


Of  General  Conduct  227 

votion,  of  physical  fitness,  unstinted  exertion 
and  universal  responsibility,  will  remain  a  per- 
manent acquisition,  though  the  last  ammunition 
has  been  used  ages  since  in  the  pyrotechnic 
display  that  welcomed  the  coming  of  the  ultimate 
Peace. 


§  19- 

Of  Abstinences  and  Disciplines. —From 
these  large  issues  of  conduct  let  me  come  now 
to  more  intimate  things,  to  one's  self-control, 
the  regulation  of  one's  personal  life.  And  first 
about  abstinences  and  disciplines. 

I  have  already  confessed  (Book  II,  §  6)  that 
my  nature  is  one  that  dislikes  abstinences  and 
is  wearied  by  and  wary  of  excess. 

I  do  not  feel  that  it  is  right  to  suppress  alto- 
gether any  part  of  one's  being.  In  itself  ab- 
stinence seems  to  me  a  refusal  to  experience, 
and  that,  upon  the  lines  of  thought  I  follow,  is 
to  say  that  abstinence  for  its  own  sake  is  evil. 
But  for  an  end  all  abstinences  are  permissible, 
and  if  the  kinetic  type  of  believer  finds  both 
his  individual  and  his  associated  efficiency  en- 
hanced by  a  systematic  discipline,  if  he  is  con- 
vinced that  he  must  specialise  because  of  the 
discursiveness  of  his  motives,  because  there  is 
something  he  wants  to  do  or  be  so  good  that 
the  rest  of  them  may  very  well  be  suppressed 

for  its  sake,  then  he  must  suppress.     But  the 

228 


Of  General  Conduct  229 

virtue  is  in  what  he  gets  done  and  not  what  he 
does  not  do.  Reasonable  fear  is  a  sound  reason 
for  abstinence,  as  when  a  man  has  a  passion 
like  a  lightly  sleeping  maniac  that  the  slightest 
indulgence  will  arouse.  Then  he  must  needs 
adopt  heroic  abstinence,  and  even  more  so  must 
he  take  to  preventive  restraint  if  he  sees  any 
motive  becoming  unruly  and  urgent  and  trouble- 
some. Fear  is  a  sound  reason  for  abstinence 
and  so  is  love.  Many  who  have  sensitive  imag- 
inations nowadays  very  properly  abstain  from 
meat  because  of  butchery.  And  it  is  often  need- 
ful, out  of  love  and  brotherhood,  to  abstain  from 
things  harmless  to  oneself  because  they  are 
inconveniently  alluring  to  others  linked  to  us. 
The  moderate  drinker  who  sits  at  table  sipping 
his  wine  in  the  sight  of  one  he  knows  to  be  a 
potential  dipsomaniac  is  at  the  best  but  an 
unloving  fool. 

But  mere  abstinence  and  the  doing  of  barren 
toilsome  unrewarding  things  for  the  sake  of  the 
toil,  is  a  perversion  of  one's  impulses.  There 
is  neither  honour  nor  virtue  nor  good  in  that. 

I  do  not  believe  in  negative  virtues.  I  think 
the  ideas  of  them  arise  out  of  the  system  of 
metaphysical  errors  I  have  roughly  analysed 
in  my  first  book,  out  of  the  inherent  tendency 


230  First  and  Last  Things 

of  the  mind  to  make  the  relative  absolute  and 
to  convert  quantitative  into  qualitative  dif- 
ferences. Our  minds  fall  very  readily  under  the 
spell  of  such  unmitigated  words  as  Purity  and 
Chastity.  Only  death  beyond  decay,  absolute 
non-existence,  can  be  Pure  and  Chaste.  Life 
is  impurity,  fact  is  impure.  Everything  has 
traces  of  alien  matter ;  our  very  health  is  depend- 
ent upon  parasitic  bacteria,  the  purest  blood  in 
the  world  has  a  tainted  ancestor,  and  not  a  saint 
but  has  evil  thoughts.  It  was  blindness  to  that 
which  set  men  stoning  the  woman  taken  in 
adultery.  They  forgot  what  they  were  made 
of.  This  stupidity,  this  unreasonable  idealism 
of  the  common  mind,  fills  life  to-day  with  cruelties 
and  exclusions,  with  partial  suicides  and  secret 
shames.  But  we  are  born  impure,  we  die  impure ; 
it  is  a  fable  that  spotless  white  lilies  sprang  from 
any  saint's  decay,  and  the  chastity  of  monk  or 
nun  is  but  introverted  impurity.  We  have  to 
take  life  valiantly  on  these  conditions  and  make 
such  honour  and  beauty  and  sympathy  out  of 
our  confusions,  gather  such  constructive  experi- 
ence, as  we  may. 

There  is  a  mass  of  real  superstition  upon  these 
points,  a  belief  in  a  magic  purity,  in  magic  per- 
sonalities who  can  say: — 


Of  General  Conduct  231 

"  My  strength  is  as  the  strength  of  ten 
Because  my  heart  is  pure," — 

and  in  wonderful  clairvoyant  innocents  like  the 
young  man  in  Mr.  Kipling's  Finest  Story  in  the 
World. 

There  is  a  lurking  disposition  to  believe,  even 
among  those  who  lead  the  normal  type  of  life, 
that  the  abstinent  and  chastely  celibate  are 
exceptionally  healthy,  energetic,  immune.  The 
wildest  claims  are  made.  But  indeed  it  is  true 
for  all  who  can  see  the  facts  of  life  simply  and 
plainly,  that  man  is  an  omnivorous,  versatile, 
various  creature  and  can  draw  his  strength  from 
a  hundred  varieties  of  nourishment.  He  has 
physiological  idiosyncracies  too  that  are  indif- 
ferent to  biological  classifications  and  moral 
generalities.  It  is  not  true  that  his  absorbent 
vessels  begin  their  task  as  children  begin  the 
guessing  game,  by  asking,  "Is  it  animal,  veg- 
etable or  mineral  ?"  He  responds  to  stimulation 
and  recuperates  after  the  exhaustion  of  his  re- 
sponse, and  his  being  is  singularly  careless 
whether  the  stimulation  comes  as  a  drug  or 
stimulant,  or  as  anger  or  music  or  noble  appeals. 

Most  people  speak  of  drugs  in  the  spirit  of 
that  admirable  firm  of  soap-boilers  which  assures 
its  customers   that   the   soap   they   make   "con- 


232  First  and  Last  Things 

tains  no  chemicals."  Drugs  are  supposed  to 
be  a  mystic  diabolical  class  of  substance,  remote 
from  and  contrasting  in  their  nature  with  all 
other  things.  So  they  banish  a  tonic  from  the 
house  and  stuff  their  children  with  manufactured 
cereals  and  chocolate  creams.  The  drunken 
helot  of  this  system  of  absurdities  is  the  Christian 
Scientist  who  denies  healing  only  to  those  who 
have  studied  pathology,  and  declares  that  any- 
thing whatever  put  into  a  bottle  and  labelled 
with  directions  for  its  use  by  a  doctor  is  thereby 
damnable  and  damned.  But  indeed  all  drugs 
and  all  the  things  of  life  have  their  uses  and 
dangers,  and  there  is  no  wholesale  truth  to  ex- 
cuse us  a  particular  wisdom  and  watchfulness 
in  these  matters.  Unless  we  except  smoking 
as  an  unclean  and  needless  artificiality,  all  these 
matters  of  eating  and  drinking  and  habit  are 
matters  of  more  or  less.  It  seems  to  me  foolish 
to  make  anything  that  is  stimulating  and  pleas- 
urable into  a  habit,  for  that  is  slowly  and  surely 
to  lose  a  stimulus  and  pleasure  and  create  a 
need  that  it  may  became  painful  to  check  or 
control.  The  moral  rule  of  my  standards  is 
irregularity.  If  I  were  a  father  confessor  I  should 
begin  my  catalogue  of  sins  by  asking,  "Are  you 
a  man  of  regular  life?"     And  I  would  charge 


Of  General  Conduct  233 

my  penitent  to  go  away  forthwith  and  commit 
some  practicable  saving  irregularity;  to  fast  or 
get  drunk  or  climb  a  mountain  or  sup  on  pork 
and  beans  or  give  up  smoking  or  spend  a  month 
with  publicans  and  sinners.  Right  conduct  for 
the  common  unspecialised  man  lies  delicately 
adjusted  between  defect  and  excess  as  a  watch 
is  adjusted  and  adjustable  between  fast  and 
slow.  We  none  of  us  altogether  and  always 
keep  the  balance  or  are  altogether  safe  from 
losing  it.  We  swing,  balancing  and  adjusting, 
along  our  path.  Life  is  that  and  abstinence  is 
for  the  most  part  a  mere  evasion  of  life. 


§   20. 

On  Forgetting,  and  the  Need  of  Prayer, 
Reading,  Discussion  and  Worship. — One  as- 
pect of  life  I  had  very  much  in  mind  when  I 
planned  those  Samurai  disciplines  of  mine.  It 
was  forgetting. 

We  forget. 

Even  after  we  have  found  Salvation,  we  have 
to  keep  hold  of  Salvation;  believing,  we  must 
continue  to  believe.  We  cannot  always  be  at 
a  high  level  of  noble  emotion.  We  have  clam- 
bered on  the  ship  of  Faith  and  found  our  place 
and  work  aboard,  and  even  while  we  are  busied 
upon  it,  behold  we  are  back  and  drowning  in 
the  sea  of  chaotic  things. 

Every  religious  body,  every  religious  teacher, 
has  appreciated  this  difficulty  and  the  need 
there  is  of  reminders  and  renewals.  Faith  needs 
restatement  and  revival  as  the  body  needs  food. 
And  since  the  Believer  is  to  seek  much  experi- 
ence and  be  a  judge  of  less  or  more  in  many 
things,  it  is  particularly  necessary  that  he  should 

keep  hold  upon  a  living  Faith. 

234 


Of  General  Conduct  235 

How  may  he  best  do  this  ? 

I  think  we  may  state  it  as  a  general  duty 
that  he  must  do  whatever  he  can  to  keep  his 
faith  constantly  alive.  But  beyond  that  what 
a  man  must  do  depends  almost  entirely  upon 
his  own  intellectual  character.  Many  people 
of  a  regular  type  of  mind  can  refresh  themselves 
by  some  recurrent  duty,  by  repeating  a  daily 
prayer,  by  daily  reading  or  re-reading  some 
devotional  book.  With  others  constant  repe- 
tition leads  to  a  mental  and  spiritual  deaden- 
ing, until  beautiful  phrases  become  unmeaning, 
eloquent  statements  inane  and  ridiculous, — 
matter  for  parody.  All  who  can,  I  think,  should 
pray  and  should  read  and  re-read  what  they  have 
found  spiritually  helpful,  and  if  they  know  of 
others  of  kindred  dispositions  and  can  organise 
these  exercises,  they  should  do  so.  Collective 
worship  again  is  a  necessity  for  many  Believers. 
For  many,  the  public  religious  services  of  this 
or  that  form  of  Christianity  supply  an  at- 
mosphere rich  in  the  essential  quality  of  religion 
and  abounding  in  phrases  about  the  religious 
life,  rich  and  mellow  from  the  use  of  centuries 
and  almost  immediately  applicable.  It  seems 
to  me  that  if  one  can  do  so,  one  should  par- 
ticipate  in   such   public   worship   and   habituate 


236  First  and  Last  Things 

oneself  to  read  back  into  it  that  collective  pur- 
pose and  conscience  it  once  embodied. 

With  others  again,  Faith  can  be  most  ani- 
mated by  writing,  by  confession,  by  discussion, 
by  talk  with  friends  or  antagonists. 

One  or  other  or  all  of  these  things  the  Believer 
must  do,  for  the  mind  is  a  living  and  moving 
process,  and  the  thing  that  lies  inert  in  it  is 
presently  covered  up  by  new  interests  and  lost. 
If  you  make  a  sort  of  King  Log  of  your  faith, 
presently  something  else  will  be  sitting  upon 
it,  pride  or  self-interest,  or  some  rebel  craving, 
King  de  facto  of  your  soul,  directing  it  back  to 
anarchy. 

For  many  types  that  however  is  exactly  what 
happens  with  public  worship.  They  do  get  a 
King  Log  in  Ceremony.  And  if  you  deliberately 
overcome  and  suppress  your  perception  of  and 
repugnance  to  the  perfunctoriness  of  religion  in 
nine  tenths  of  the  worshippers  about  you,  you 
may  be  destroying  at  the  same  time  your  own 
intellectual  and  moral  sensitiveness.  But  I  am 
not  suggesting  that  you  should  force  yourself 
to  take  part  in  public  worship  against  your 
perceptions,  but  only  that  if  it  helps  you  to 
worship  you  should  not  hesitate  to  do  so. 

We  deal  here  with  a  real  need  that  is  not  to 


Of  General  Conduct  237 

be  fettered  by  any  general  prescription.  I  have 
one  Cambridge  friend  who  finds  nothing  so  up- 
lifting in  the  world  as  the  atmosphere  of  the 
afternoon  service  in  the  choir  of  King's  College 
Chapel,  and  another,  a  very  great  and  distinguished 
and  theologically  sceptical  woman,  who  ac- 
customed herself  for  some  time  to  hear  from 
a  distant  corner  the  evening  service  in  St.  Paul's 
Cathedral  and  who  would  go  great  distances  to 
do  that. 

Many  people  find  an  exaltation  and  broad- 
ening of  the  mind  in  mountain  scenery  and  the 
starry  heavens  and  the  wide  arc  of  the  sea,  and 
as  I  have  already  said,  it  was  part  of  the  dis- 
ciplines of  these  Samurai  of  mine  that  yearly 
they  should  go  apart  for  at  least  a  week  of  sol- 
itary wandering  and  meditation  in  lonely  and 
desolate  places.  Music  again  is  a  frequent  means 
of  release  from  the  narrow  life  as  it  closes  about 
us.  One  man  I  know  makes  an  anthology  into 
which  he  copies  to  re-read  any  passage  that 
stirs  and  revives  in  him  the  sense  of  broad  issues. 
Others  again  seem  able  to  refresh  their  nobility 
of  outlook  in  the  atmosphere  of  an  intense  per- 
sonal love. 

Some  of  us  seem  to  forget  almost  as  if  it  were 
an  essential  part  of  ourselves.     Such  a  man  as 


238  First  and  Last  Things 

myself,  irritable,  easily  fatigued  and  bored, 
versatile,  sensuous,  curious  and  a  little  greedy 
for  experience,  is  perpetually  losing  touch  with 
his  faith,  so  that  indeed  I  sometimes  turn  over 
these  pages  that  I  have  written  and  come  upon 
my  declarations  and  confessions  with  a  sense  of 
alien  surprise. 

It  may  be,  I  say,  that  for  some  of  us  forget- 
ting is  the  normal  process,  that  one  has  to 
believe  and  forget  and  blunder  and  learn  some- 
thing and  regret  and  suffer  and  so  come  again 
to  belief  much  as  we  have  to  eat  and  grow  hun- 
gry and  eat  again.  What  these  others  can  get 
in  their  temples  we,  after  our  own  manner,  must 
distil  through  sleepless  and  lonely  nights,  from 
unavoidable  humiliations,  from  the  smarting  of 
bruised  shins. 


§21. 

Democracy  and  Aristocracy. — And  now- 
having  dealt  with  the  general  form  of  a  man's 
duty  and  with  his  duty  to  himself,  let  me  come 
to  his  attitude  to  his  individual  fellow-men. 

The  broad  principles  determining  that  atti- 
tude are  involved  in  things  already  written  in 
this  book.  The  belief  in  a  collective  being  gather- 
ing experience  and  developing  will,  to  which 
every  life  is  subordinated,  renders  the  cruder 
conception  of  aristocracy,  the  idea  of  a  select 
life  going  on  amidst  a  majority  of  trivial  and 
contemptible  persons  who  "do  not  exist,"  un- 
tenable. It  abolishes  contempt.  Indeed  to 
believe  at  all  in  a  comprehensive  purpose  in 
things  is  to  abandon  that  attitude  and  all  the 
habits  and  acts  that  imply  it.  But  a  belief  in 
universal  significance  does  not  altogether  pre- 
clude a  belief  in  an  aristocratic  method  of  prog- 
ress, in  the  idea  of  the  subordination  of  a  number 
of  individuals  to  others  who  can  utilise  their 
lives    and    help    and    contributory    achievements 

in   the   general   purpose.     To   a  certain   extent 

239 


240  First  and  Last  Things 

indeed,  this  last  conception  is  almost  inevitable. 
We  must  needs  so  think  of  ourselves  in  relation 
to  plants  and  animals,  and  I  see  no  reason  why 
we  should  not  think  so  of  our  relations  to  other 
men.  There  are  clearly  great  differences  in  the 
capacity  and  range  of  experience  of  man  and 
man  and  in  their  power  of  using  and  rendering 
their  experiences  for  the  racial  synthesis.  Vig- 
orous persons  do  look  naturally  for  help  and 
service  to  persons  of  less  initiative,  and  we  all 
are  more  or  less  capable  of  admiration  and  hero- 
worship  and  pleased  to  help  and  give  ourselves 
to  those  we  feel  to  be  finer  or  better  or  completer 
or  more  forceful  and  leaderly  than  ourselves. 
This  is  natural  and  inevitable  aristocracy. 

For  that  reason  it  is  not  to  be  organised.  We 
organise  things  that  are  not  inevitable,  but 
this  is  clearly  a  complex  matter  of  accident  and 
personalities  for  which  there  can  be  no  general 
rule.  All  organised  aristocracy  is  manifestly 
begotten  by  that  fallacy  of  classification  my 
Metaphysical  book  set  itself  to  expose.  Its 
effect  is,  and  has  been  in  all  cases,  to  mask  natural 
aristocracy,  to  draw  the  lines  by  wholesale  and 
wrong,  to  bolster  up  weak  and  ineffectual  per- 
sons in  false  positions  and  to  fetter  or  hamper 
strong  and  vigorous  people.     The  false  aristo- 


Of  General  Conduct  241 

crat  is  a  figure  of  pride  and  claims,  a  consumer 
followed  by  dupes.  He  is  proudly  secretive,  pre- 
tending to  aims  beyond  the  common  under- 
standing. The  true  aristocrat  is  known  rather 
than  knows;  he  makes  and  serves.  He  exacts 
no  deference.  He  is  urgent  to  make  others 
share  what  he  knows  and  wants  and  achieves. 
He  does  not  think  of  others  as  his  but  as  the 
End's. 

There  is  a  base  democracy  just  as  there  is  a 
base  aristocracy,  the  swaggering,  aggressive  dis- 
position of  the  vulgar  soul  that  admits  neither 
of  superiors  nor  leaders.  Its  true  name  is  in- 
subordination. It  resents  rules  and  refinements, 
delicacies,  differences  and  organisation.  It  dreams 
that  its  leaders  are  its  delegates.  It  takes  refuge 
from  all  superiority,  all  special  knowledge,  in 
a  phantom  ideal,  the  People,  the  sublime  and 
wonderful  People.  "You  can  fool  some  of  the 
people  all  the  time  and  all  the  people  some  of 
the  time,  but  you  can't  fool  all  the  people  all 
the  time,"  expresses  I  think  quite  the  quintes- 
sence of  this  mystical  faith,  this  faith  in  which 
men  take  refuge  from  the  demand  for  order, 
discipline  and  conscious  light.  In  England  it 
has  never  been  of  any  great  account,  but  in 
America,  the  vulgar  individualist's  self-protective 


242  First  and  Last  Things 

exaltation  of  an  idealised  Common  Man  has 
worked  and  is  working  infinite  mischief. 

In  politics  the  crude  democratic  faith  leads 
directly  to  the  submission  of  every  question, 
however  subtle  and  special  its  issues  may  be,, 
to  a  popular  vote.  The  community  is  regarded 
as  a  consultative  committee  of  profoundly  wise, 
alert  and  well-informed  Comman  Men.  Since 
the  common  man  is,  as  Gustave  le  Bon  has 
pointed  out,  a  gregarious  animal,  collectively 
rather  like  a  sheep,  emotional,  hasty  and  shallow, 
the  practical  outcome  of  political  democracy 
in  all  large  communities  under  modern  con- 
ditions is  to  put  power  into  the  hands  of  rich 
newspaper  proprietors,  advertising  producers  and 
the  energetic  wealthy  generally  who  are  best 
able  to  flood  the  collective  mind  freely  with  the 
suggestions  on  which  it  acts. 

But  democracy  has  acquired  a  finer  meaning 
than  its  first  crude  intentions — there  never  was 
a  theory  started  yet  in  the  human  mind  that 
did  not  beget  a  finer  offspring  than  itself — and 
the  secondary  meaning  brings  it  at  last  into 
entire  accordance  with  the  finer  conception  of 
aristocracy.  The  test  of  this  quintessential 
democracy  is  neither  a  passionate  insistence 
upon    voting   and    the    majority    rule,   nor    an 


Of  General  Conduct  243 

arrogant  bearing  towards  those  who  are  one's 
betters  in  this  aspect  or  that,  but  fellowship. 
The  true  democrat  and  the  true  aristocrat  meet 
and  are  one  in  feeling  themselves  parts  of  one 
synthesis  under  one  Purpose  and  one  Scheme. 
Both  realise  that  self-concealment  is  the  last 
evil,  both  make  frankness  and  veracity  the  basis 
of  their  intercourse.  The  general  Tightness  of 
living  for  you  and  others  and  for  others  and  you 
is  to  understand  them  to  the  best  of  your  ability 
and  to  make  them  all,  to  the  utmost  limits  of 
your  capacity  of  expression  and  their  under- 
standing and  sympathy,  participators  in  your 
act  and  thought. 


§    22. 

On  Debts  of  Honour. — My  ethical  dispo- 
sition is  all  against  punctilio  and  I  set  no  greater 
value  on  unblemished  honour  than  I  do  on  purity. 
I  never  yet  met  a  man  who  talked  proudly  of 
his  honour  who  did  not  end  by  cheating  me, 
not  a  code  of  honour  that  did  not  impress  me 
as  something  of  a  conspiracy  against  the  com- 
mon welfare  and  purpose  in  life.  There  is  honour 
among  thieves,  and  I  think  it  might  well  end 
there  as  an  obligation  in  conduct.  The  soldier 
who  risks  a  life  he  owes  to  his  army  in  a  duel 
upon  some  silly  matter  of  personal  pride  is  no 
better  to  me  than  the  clerk  who  gambles  with 
the  money  in  his  master's  till.  When  I  was  a 
boy  I  once  paid  a  debt  of  honour,  and  it  is  one 
of  the  things  I  am  most  ashamed  of.  I  had 
played  cards  into  debt  and  I  still  remember 
burningly  how  I  went  flushed  and  shrill-voiced 
to  my  mother  and  got  the  money  she  could  so 
ill  afford  to  give  me.  I  would  not  pay  such  a 
debt  of  honour  now.     If  I  were  to  wake  up  one 

morning    owing    big    sums    that    I    had   staked 

244 


Of  General  Conduct  245 

over-night  I  would  set  to  work  at  once  by 
every  means  in  my  power  to  evade  and  repudi- 
ate that  obligation.  Such  money  as  I  have  I 
owe  under  our  present  system  to  wife  and 
sons  and  my  work  and  the  world,  and  I  see 
no  valid  reason  why  I  should  hand  it  over 
to  Smith  because  he  and  I  have  played  the 
fool  and  rascal  and  gambled.  Better  by  far 
to  accept  that  fact  and  be  published  fool  and 
rascal. 

I  have  never  been  able  to  understand  the 
sentimental  spectacle  of  sons  toiling  dreadfully 
and  wasting  themselves  upon  mere  money- 
making  to  save  the  secret  of  a  father's  pecu- 
lations and  the  " honour  of  the  family,"  or  men 
conspiring  to  weave  a  wide  and  mischievous 
net  of  lies  to  save  the  "honour"  of  a  woman. 
In  the  conventional  drama  the  preservation  of  the 
honour  of  a  woman  seems  an  adequate  excuse 
for  nearly  any  offence  short  of  murder;  the 
preservation  that  is  to  say  of  the  appearance 
of  something  that  is  already  gone.  Here  it  is 
that  I  do  definitely  part  company  with  the  false 
aristocrat  who  is  by  nature  and  intent  a  humbug 
and  fabricator  of  sham  attitudes,  and  ally  my- 
self with  democracy.  Fact,  valiantly  faced,  is 
of   more  value  than  any  reputation.     The  false 


246  First  and  Last  Things 

aristocrat  is  robed  to  the  chin  and  unwashed 
beneath,  the  true  goes  stark  as  Apollo.  The 
false  is  ridiculous  with  undignified  insistence 
upon  his  dignity;  the  true  says  like  God,  "I 
am  that  I  am." 


§  23. 

The  Idea  of  Justice. — One  word  has  so  far 
played  a  very  little  part  in  this  book,  and  that 
is  the  word  Justice. 

Those  who  have  read  the  opening  book  on 
Metaphysics  will  perhaps  see  that  this  is  a  nec- 
essary corollary  of  the  system  of  thought  de- 
veloped therein.  In  my  philosophy,  with  its 
insistence  upon  uniqueness  and  marginal  differ- 
ences and  the  provisional  nature  of  numbers 
and  classes,  there  is  little  scope  for  that  blind- 
folded lady  with  the  balances,  seeking  always 
exact  equivalents.  Nowhere  in  my  system  of 
thought  is  there  work  for  the  idea  of  Rights 
and  the  conception  of  conscientious  litigious- 
spirited  people  exactly  observing  nicely  defined 
relationships. 

You  will  note,  for  example,  that  I  base  my 
Socialism  on  the  idea  of  a  collective  develop- 
ment and  not  on  the  "right"  of  every  man  to 
his  own  labour,  or  his  "right"  to  work,  or  his 
"right"     to    subsistence.      All    these    ideas    of 

"rights"    and  of    a   social    "contract"  however 

247 


248  First  and  Last  Things 

implicit  are  merely  conventional  ways  of  look- 
ing at  things,  conventions  that  have  arisen  in 
the  mercantile  phase  of  human  development. 

Laws  and  rights,  like  common  terms  in  speech, 
are  provisional  things,  conveniences  for  taking 
hold  of  a  number  of  cases  that  would  otherwise 
be  unmanageable.  The  appeal  to  Justice  is  a 
necessarily  inadequate  attempt  to  de-individ- 
ualise a  case,  to  eliminate  the  self's  biassed  at- 
titude. I  have  declared  that  it  is  my  wilful 
belief  that  everything  that  exists  is  significant 
and  necessary.  The  idea  of  Justice  seems  to 
me  a  defective,  quantitative  application  of  the 
spirit  of  that  belief  to  men  and  women.  In 
every  case  you  try  and  discover  and  act  upon 
a  plausible  equity  that  must  necessarily  be  based 
on  arbitary  assumptions. 

There  is  no  equity  in  the  universe,  in  the 
various  spectacle  outside  our  minds;  and  the 
most  terrible  nightmare  the  human  imagination 
has  ever  engendered  is  a  Just  God,  measuring 
with  himself  as  the  Standard  against  finite  men. 
Ultimately  there  is  no  adequacy,  we  are  all 
weighed  in  the  balance  and  found  wanting. 

So,  as  the  recognition  of  this  has  grown,  Jus- 
tice has  been  tempered  with  Mercy,  which  indeed 
is  no  more  than  an  attempt  to  equalise  things 


Of  General  Conduct  249 

by  making  the  factors  of  the  very  defect  that 
is  condemned,  its  condonation.  The  modern 
mind  fluctuates  uncertainly  somewhere  between 
extremes,  now  harsh  and  now  ineffectual. 

To  me  there  seems  no  validity  in  these  quasi- 
absolute  standards. 

A  man  seeks  and  obeys  standards  of  equity 
simply  to  economise  his  moral  effort,  not  be- 
cause there  is  anything  true  or  sublime  about 
Justice,  but  because  he  knows  he  is  too  egoistic 
and  weak-minded  and  obsessed  to  do  any  perfect 
thing  at  all,  because  he  cannot  trust  himself 
with  his  own  transitory  emotions  unless  he 
train  himself  beforehand  to  observe  a  prede- 
termined rule.  There  is  scarcely  an  eventuality 
in  life  that  without  the  help  of  these  general- 
isations would  not  exceed  the  average  man's 
intellectual  power  and  moral  energy,  just  as 
there  is  scarcely  an  idea  or  an  emotion  that  can 
be  conveyed  without  the  use  of  faulty  and  de- 
fective common  names.  Justice  and  Mercy  are 
indeed  not  ultimately  different  in  their  nature 
from  such  other  conventions  as  the  rules  of  a 
game,  the  rules  of  etiquette,  forms  of  address, 
cab  tariffs  and  standards  of  all  sorts.  They 
are  mere  organisations  of  relationship  either  to 
economise  thought  or  else  to  facilitate   mutual 


250  First  and  Last  Things 

understanding  and  codify  common  action.  Mod- 
esty and  self-submission,  love  and  service  are,  in 
the  system  of  my  beliefs,  far  more  fundamental 
Tightnesses  and  duties. 

We  are  not  mercantile  and  litigious  units 
such  as  making  Justice  our  social  basis  would 
imply,  we  are  not  select  responsible  right  persons 
mixed  with  and  tending  weak  irresponsible 
wrong  persons  such  as  the  notion  of  Mercy  sug- 
gests, we  are  parts  of  one  being  and  body,  each 
unique  yet  sharing  a  common  nature  and  a 
variety  of  imperfections  and  working  together 
(albeit  more  or  less  darkly  and  ignorantly)  for 
a  common  end. 

We  are  strong  and  weak  together  and  in  one 
brotherhood.  The  weak  have  no  essential  rights 
against  the  strong,  nor  the  strong  against  the 
weak.  The  world  does  not  exist  for  our  weak- 
nesses but  our  strength.  And  the  real  justifi- 
cation of  democracy  lies  in  the  fact  that  none  of 
us  are  altogether  strong  nor  altogether  weak; 
for  everyone  there  is  an  aspect  wherein  he  is 
seen  to  be  weak;  for  everyone  there  is  a  strength 
though  it  may  be  only  a  little  peculiar  strength 
or  an  undeveloped  potentiality.  The  uncon- 
verted man  uses  his  strength  egotistically,  em- 
phasises  himself  harshly  against  the  man  who 


Of  General  Conduct  251 

is  weak  where  he  is  strong,  and  hates  and  con- 
ceals his  own  weakness.  The  Believer,  in  the 
measure  of  his  belief,  respects  and  seeks  to  under- 
stand the  different  strength  of  others  and  to  use 
his  own  distinctive  power  with  and  not  against 
his  fellow  men,  in  the  common  service  of  that 
synthesis  to  which  each  one  of  them  is  ultimately 
as  necessary  as  he. 


24. 


Of  Love  and  Justice. — Now  here  the  friend 
who  has  read  the  first  draft  of  this  book  falls 
into  something  like  a  dispute  with  me.  She 
does  not,  I  think,  like  this  dismissal  of  Justice 
from  a  primary  place  in  my  scheme  of  conduct. 

"Justice,"  she  asserts,  "is  an  instinctive  crav- 
ing very  nearly  akin  to  the  physical  craving  for 
equilibrium.  Its  social  importance  corresponds. 
It  seeks  to  keep  the  individual's  claims  in  such 
a  position  as  to  conflict  as  little  as  possible  with 
those  of  others.  Justice  is  the  root  instinct  of 
all  social  feeling,  of  all  feeling  which  does  not 
take  account  of  whether  we  like  or  dislike  indi- 
viduals, it  is  the  feeling  of  an  orderly  position 
of  our  Ego  towards  others,  merely  considered  as 
others  and  of  all  the  Egos  merely  as  Egos  towards 
each  other.  Love  cannot  be  felt  towards  others 
as  others.  Love  is  the  expression  of  individual 
suitability  and  preference,  its  positive  existence 
in  some  cases  implies  its  absolute  negation  in 
others.     Hence  Love  can  never  be  the  essential 

and  root  of  social  feeling,  and  hence  the  necessity 

252 


Of  General  Conduct  253 

for  the  instinct  of  abstract  justice  which  takes 
no  account  of  preferences  or  aversions.  And 
here  I  may  say  that  all  application  of  the  word 
love  to  unknown,  distant  creatures,  to  mere 
others,  is  a  perversion  and  a  wasting  of  the  word 
love,  which  taking  its  origin  in  sexual  and  parental 
preference,  always  implies  a  preference  of  one 
object  to  the  other.  To  love  everybody  is  simply 
not  to  love  at  all.  And  it  is  just  because  of  the 
passionate  preference  instinctively  felt  for  some  in- 
dividuals, that  mankind  requires  the  self-regarding 
and  self-respecting  passion  of  justice." 

Now  this  is  not  altogether  contradictory  of 
what  I  hold.  I  disagree  that  because  love  neces- 
sarily expresses  itself  in  preference,  selecting  this 
rather  than  that,  that  it  follows  necessarily  that 
its  absolute  negation  is  implied  in  the  non-selected 
cases.  A  man  may  go  into  the  world  as  a  child 
goes  into  a  garden  and  gathers  its  hands  full  of 
the  flowers  that  please  it  best  and  then  desists, 
but  only  because  its  hands  are  full  and  not  because 
it  is  at  an  end  of  the  flowers  that  it  can  find  delight 
in.  So  the  man  finds  at  last  his  memory  and 
apprehensions  glutted.  It  is  not  that  he  could 
not  love  those  others.  And  I  dispute  the  pro- 
position that  to  love  everybody  is  not  to  love  at 
all.     To  love  two  people  is  surely  to  love  more 


254  First  and  Last  Things 

than  to  love  just  one  person,  and  so  by  way  of 
three  and  four  to  a  very  large  number.  But  if 
it  is  put  that  love  must  be  a  preference  because  of 
the  mental  limitations  that  forbid  us  to  apprehend 
and  understand  more  than  a  few  of  the  multitudin- 
ous lovables  of  life,  then  I  agree.  For  all  the 
individuals  and  things  and  cases  for  which  we 
have  inadequate  time  and  energy,  we  need  a 
wholesale  method-justice.  That  is  exactly  what 
I  have  said  in  the  previous  section. 


§  25. 

The  Weakness  of  Immaturity. — One  is  apt 
to  write  and  talk  of  strong  and  weak  as  though 
some  were  always  strong,  some  always  weak. 
But  that  is  quite  a  misleading  version  of  life. 
Apart  from  the  fact  that  everyone  is  fluctuatingly 
strong  and  fluctuatingly  weak,  and  weak  and 
strong  according  to  the  quality  we  judge  them 
by,  we  have  to  remember  that  we  are  all  develop- 
ing and  learning  and  changing,  gaining  strength 
and  at  last  losing  it,  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave. 
We  are  all,  to  borrow  the  old  scholastic  term, 
pupil-teachers  of  Life;  the  term  is  none  the  less 
appropriate  because  the  pupil-teacher  taught 
badly  and  learnt  under  difficulties. 

It  may  seem  to  be  a  crowning  feat  of  platitude 

to  write  that  "we  have  to  remember"  this,  but 

it  is  overlooked  in  a  whole  mass  of  legal,  social 

and    economic    literature.     Those    extraordinary 

imaginary  cases  as  between  a  man  A  and  a  man 

B  who  start  level  on  a  desert  island  or  elsewhere, 

and  work  or  do  not  work,  or  save  or  do  not  save, 

become   the   basis   of   immense   schemes   of  just 

255 


256  First  and  Last  Things 

arrangement  which  soar  up  confidently  and 
serenely  regardless  of  the  fact  that  never  did 
anything  like  that  equal  start  occur;  that  from 
the  beginning  there  were  family  groups  and  old 
heads  and  young  heads,  help,  guidance  and  sacri- 
fice, and  those  who  had  learnt  and  those  who  had 
still  to  learn,  jumbled  together  in  confused  trans- 
actions. Deals,  tradings  and  so  forth  are  entirely 
secondary  aspects  of  these  primaries,  and  the 
attempt  to  get  an  idea  of  abstract  relationship 
by  beginning  upon  a  secondary  issue  is  the  fatal 
pervading  fallacy  in  all  these  regions  of  thought. 
At  the  present  moment  the  average  age  of  the 
world  is  I  suppose  about  21  or  22,  the  normal 
death  somewhere  about  44  or  45,  that  is  to  say 
nearly  half  the  world  is  " under  age,"  green,  in- 
experienced, demanding  help,  easily  misled  and 
put  in  the  wrong  and  betrayed.  Yet  the  younger 
moiety,  if  we  do  indeed  assume  life's  object  is  a 
collective  synthesis,  is  more  important  than  the 
older,  and  every  older  person  bound  to  be  some- 
thing of  a  guardian  to  the  younger.  It  follows 
directly  from  the  fundamental  beliefs  I  have  as- 
sumed that  wTe  are  missing  the  most  important 
aspects  of  life  if  we  are  not  directly  or  indirectly 
serving  the  young,  helping  them  individually  or 
collectively.    Just  in  the  measure  that  one's  living 


Of  General  Conduct  257 

falls  away  from  that,  do  we  fall  away  from  life 
into  a  mere  futility  of  existence,  and  approach 
the  state,  the  extraordinary  and  wonderful  middle 
state  of  (for  example)  those  extinct  and  entirely 
damned  old  gentlemen  one  sees  and  hears  eating 
and  sleeping  in  every  comfortable  London  club. 
That  constructive  synthetic  purpose  which  I 
have  made  the  ruling  idea  in  my  scheme  of  con- 
duct may  be  indeed  completely  restated  in  an- 
other form,  a  form  I  adopted  for  a  book  I  wrote 
some  years  ago  called  Mankind  in  the  Making. 
In  this  I  pointed  out  that  "Life  is  a  tissue  of 
births," 

and  if  the  whole  of  life  is  an  evolving  succession  of 
births  then  not  only  must  a  man  in  his  individual 
capacity  (physically  as  parent,  doctor,  food  dealer, 
food  carrier,  home  builder,  protector,  or  mentally 
as  teacher,  news  dealer,  author,  preacher)  contribute 
to  births  and  growths  and  the  fine  future  of  mankind, 
but  the  collective  aspects  of  man,  his  social  and 
political  organisations  must  also  be,  in  the  essence, 
organisations  that  more  or  less  profitably  and  more 
or  less  intentionally,  set  themselves  towards  this  end. 
They  are  finally  concerned  with  the  birth  and  with 
the  sound  development  towards  still  better  births, 
of  human  lives,  just  as  every  implement  in  the  tool- 
shed  of  a  seedsman's  nursery,  even  the  hoe  and  the 
roller,  is  concerned  finally  with  the  seeding  and  with 
the  sound  development  towards  still  better  seeding 
of  plants.  The  private  and  personal  motive  of  the 
17 


258  First  and  Last  Things 

seedsman  in  procuring  and  using  these  tools  may 
be  avarice,  ambition,  a  religious  belief  in  the  saving 
efficacy  of  nursery  keeping  or  a  simple  passion  for 
bettering  flowers,  that  does  not  affect  the  definite 
final  purpose  of  his  outfit  of  tools. 

And  just  as  we  might  judge  completely  and  criti- 
cise and  improve  that  outfit  from  an  attentive  study 
of  the  welfare  of  plants  and  with  an  entire  disregard 
of  his  remoter  motives,  so  we  may  judge  all  collective 
human  enterprises  from  the  standpoint  of  an  atten- 
tive study  of  human  births  and  development.  Any 
collective  human  enterprise,  institution,  movement, 
party  or  state,  is  to  be  judged  as  a  whole  and  com- 
pletely, as  it  conduces  more  or  less  to  wholesome  and 
hopeful  births,  and  according  to  the  qualitative  and 
quantitative  advance  due  to  its  influence  made  by  each 
generation  of  citizens  born  under  its  influence  towards 
a  higher  and  ampler  standard  of  life. 

And  individual  conduct,  quite  as  much  as 
collective  affairs,  comes  under  the  same  test. 
We  are  guides  and  school  builders,  helpers  and 
influences  every  hour  of  our  lives,  and  by  that 
standard  we  can  and  must  judge  all  our  ways  of 
living. 


26. 


Possibility  of  a  New  Etiquette. — These  two 
ideas,  firstly  the  pupil-teacher  parental  idea  and 
secondly  the  democratic  idea  (that  of  an  equal 
ultimate  significance),  the  second  correcting  any 
tendency  in  the  first  to  pedagogic  arrogance  and 
tactful  concealments,  do  I  think  give,  when  taken 
together,  the  general  attitude  a  right-living  man 
will  take  to  his  individual  fellow  creature.  They 
play  against  each  other,  providing  elements  of 
contradiction  and  determining  a  balanced  course. 
It  seems  to  me  to  follow  necessarily  from  my 
fundamental  beliefs  that  the  Believer  will  tend 
to  be  and  want  to  be  and  seek  to  be  friendly  to, 
and  interested  in,  all  sorts  of  people,  and  truth- 
ful and  helpful  and  hating  concealment.  To  be 
that  with  any  approach  to  perfection  demands  an 
intricate  and  difficult  effort,  introspection  to  the 
hilt  of  one's  power,  a  saving  natural  gift;  one 
has  to  avoid  pedantry,  aggression,  brutality,  ami- 
able tiresomeness — there  are  pitfalls  on  every 
side.     The  more  one  thinks  about  other  people 

the  more  interesting  and  pleasing  they  are;  I  am 

259 


260  First  and  Last  Things 

all  for  kindly  gossip  and  knowing  things  about 
them,  and  all  against  the  silly  and  limiting  hard- 
ness of  soul  that  will  not  look  into  one's  fellows 
nor  go  out  to  them.  The  use  and  justification  of 
most  literature,  of  fiction,  verse,  history,  biog- 
raphy, is  that  it  lets  us  into  understandings  and 
the  suggestion  of  human  possibilities.  The  gen- 
eral purpose  of  intercourse  is  to  get  as  close  as  one 
can  to  the  realities  of  the  people  one  meets  and 
to  give  oneself  to  them  just  so  far  as  possible. 

From  that  I  think  there  arises  naturally  a 
newer  etiquette  that  would  set  aside  many  of  the 
rigidities  of  procedure  that  keep  people  apart 
to-day.  There  is  a  fading  prejudice  against 
asking  personal  questions,  against  talking  about 
oneself  or  one's  immediate  personal  interests, 
against  discussing  religion  and  politics  and  any 
such  keenly  felt  matter.  No  doubt  it  is  necessary 
at  times  to  protect  oneself  against  clumsy  and 
stupid  familiarities,  against  noisy  and  inattentive 
egotists,  against  intriguers  and  liars  but  only  in 
the  last  resort  do  such  breaches  of  patience  seem 
justifiable  to  me;  for  the  most  part  our  traditions 
of  speech  and  intercourse  altogether  overdo  sep- 
arations, the  preservation  of  distances  and  pro- 
tective devices  in  general. 


27. 


Sex. — So  far  I  have  ignored  the  immense  im- 
portance of  Sex  in  our  lives  and  for  the  most  part 
kept  the  discussion  so  generalised  as  to  apply 
impartially  to  women  and  men.  But  now  I  have 
reached  a  point  when  this  great  boundary  line 
between  two  halves  of  the  world  and  the  intense 
and  intimate  personal  problems  that  play  across 
it  must  be  faced. 

For  not  only  must  we  bend  our  general  activi- 
ties and  our  intellectual  life  to  the  conception  of 
a  human  synthesis,  but  out  of  our  bodies  and 
emotional  possibilities  we  have  to  make  the  new 
world  bodily  and  emotionally.  To  the  test  of 
that  we  have  to  bring  all  sorts  of  questions  that 
agitate  us  to-day,  the  social  and  political  equality 
and  personal  freedom  of  women,  the  differing 
code  of  honour  for  the  sexes,  the  controls  and 
limitations  to  set  upon  love  and  desire.  If,  for 
example,  it  is  for  the  good  of  the  species  that  a 
whole  half  of  its  individuals  should  be  specialised 
and  subordinated  to  the  physical  sexual  life,  as 

in  certain  phases  of  human  development  women 

261 


262  First  and  Last  Things 

have  tended  to  be,  then  certainly  we  must  do 
nothing  to  prevent  that.  We  have  set  aside  the 
conception  of  Justice  as  in  any  sense  a  counter- 
vailing idea  to  that  of  the  synthetic  process. 

And  it  is  well  to  remember  that  for  the  whole 
of  sexual  conduct  there  is  quite  conceivably  no 
general  simple  rule.  It  is  quite  possible  that,  as 
Metchnikoff  maintains  in  his  extraordinarily  illu- 
minating Nature  of  Man,  we  are  dealing  with  an 
irresolvable  tangle  of  disharmonies.  We  have 
passions  that  do  not  insist  upon  their  physiologi- 
cal end,  desires  that  may  be  prematurely  vivid  in 
childhood,  a  fantastic  curiosity,  old  needs  of  the 
ape  but  thinly  overlaid  by  the  acquisitions  of  the 
man,  emotions  that  jar  with  physical  impulses, 
inexplicable  pains  and  diseases.  And  not  only 
have  we  to  remember  that  we  are  dealing  with 
disharmonies  that  may  at  the  very  best  be  only 
patched  together,  but  we  are  dealing  with  matters 
in  which  the  element  of  idiosyncrasy  is  essential, 
insisting  upon  an  incalculable  flexibility  in  any 
rule  we  make,  unless  we  are  to  take  types  and 
indeed  whole  classes  of  personality  and  write 
them  down  as  absolutely  bad  and  fit  only  for 
suppression  and  restraint.  And  on  the  mental 
side  we  are  further  perplexed  by  the  extraordinary 
suggestibility  of  human  beings.     In  sexual  matters 


Of  General  Conduct  263 

there  seems  to  me— and  I  think  I  share  a  general 
ignorance  here — to  be  no  directing  instinct  at  all, 
but  only  an  instinct  to  do  something  generally 
sexual;  there  are  almost  equally  powerful  desires 
to  do  right  and  not  to  act  under  compulsion. 
The  specific  forms  of  conduct  imposed  upon  these 
instincts  and  desires  depend  upon  a  vast  con- 
fusion of  suggestions,  institutions,  conventions, 
ways  of  putting  things.  We  are  dealing  therefore 
with  problems  ineradicably  complex,  varying 
endlessly  in  their  instances,  and  changing  as  we 
deal  with  them.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the 
only  really  profitable  discussion  of  sexual  matters 
is  in  terms  of  individuality,  through  the  novel, 
the  lyric,  the  play,  autobiography  or  biography 
of  the  frankest  sort.  But  such  generalisations  as 
I  can  make  I  will. 

To  me  it  seems  manifest  that  sexual  matters 
may  be  discussed  generally  in  at  least  three 
permissible  and  valid  ways,  of  which  the  con- 
sideration of  the  world  as  a  system  of  births  and 
education  is  only  the  dominant  chief.  There  is 
next  the  question  of  the  physical  health  and 
beauty  of  the  community  and  how  far  sexual  rules 
and  customs  affect  that,  and  thirdly  the  question 
of  the  mental  and  moral  atmosphere  in  which 
sexual  conventions  and  laws  must  necessarily  be 


264  First  and  Last  Things 

an  important  factor.  It  is  alleged  that  probably 
in  the  case  of  men  and  certainly  in  the  case  of 
women,  some  sexual  intercourse  is  a  necessary 
phase  in  existence;  that  without  it  there  is  an 
incompleteness,  a  failure  in  the  life  cycle,  a  real 
wilting  and  failure  of  energy  and  vitality  and 
the  development  of  morbid  states.  And  for  most 
of  us  half  the  friendships  and  intimacies  from 
which  we  derive  the  daily  interest  and  sustaining 
force  in  our  lives,  draw  mysterious  elements  from 
sexual  attraction  and  depend  and  hesitate  upon 
our  conception  of  the  liberties  and  limits  we  must 
give  to  that  force. 


28. 


The  Institution  of  Marriage. — The  indi- 
vidual attitudes  of  men  to  women  and  of  women 
to  men  are  necessarily  determined  to  a  large  ex- 
tent by  certain  general  ideas  of  relationship,  by 
institutions  and  conventions.  One  of  the  most 
important  and  debatable  of  these  is  whether  we 
are  to  consider  and  treat  women  as  citizens  and 
fellows,  or  as  beings  differing  mentally  from  men 
and  grouped  in  positions  of  at  least  material 
dependence  to  individual  men.  Our  decision  in 
that  direction  will  affect  all  our  conduct  from  the 
larger  matters  down  to  the  smallest  points  of 
deportment;  it  will  affect  even  our  manner  of 
address  and  determine  whether  when  we  who  are 
men  speak  to  a  woman  we  shall  be  as  frank  and 
unaffected  as  with  a  man  or  touched  with  a  faint 
suggestion  of  the  reserves  of  a  cat  which  does  not 
wish  to  be  suspected  of  wanting  to  steal  the  milk. 

Now  as  far  as  that  goes  it  follows  almost  ne- 
cessarily from  my  views  upon  aristocracy  and 
democracy  that  I    declare    for  the   conventional 

equality  of  women,  that  is  to  say  for  the  deter- 

265 


266  First  and  Last  Things 

mination  to  make  neither  sex  nor  any  sexual 
characteristic  a  standard  of  superiority  or  in- 
feriority, for  the  view  that  a  woman  is  a  person 
as  important  and  necessary,  as  much  to  be  con- 
sulted, and  entitled  to  as  much  freedom  of  action 
as  a  man.  I  admit  that  this  decision  is  a  choice 
into  which  temperament  enters,  that  I  cannot 
produce  compelling  reason  why  anyone  else 
should  adopt  my  view.  I  can  produce  considera- 
tions in  support  of  my  view,  that  is  all.  But 
they  are  so  implicit  in  all  that  has  gone  before 
that  I  will  not  trouble  to  detail  them  here. 

The  conception  of  equality  and  fellowship 
between  men  and  women  is  an  idea  at  least  as 
old  as  Plato  and  one  that  has  recurred  wherever 
civilisation  has  reached  a  phase  in  which  men 
and  women  were  sufficiently  released  from  mili- 
tant and  economic  urgency  to  talk  and  read  and 
think.  But  it  has  never  yet  been,  at  least  in  the 
historical  period  and  in  any  but  isolated  social 
groups,  a  working  structural  idea.  The  working 
structural  idea  is  the  Patriarchal  Family,  in 
which  the  woman  is  inferior  and  submits  herself 
and  is  subordinated  to  the  man,  the  head  of  the 
family. 

We  live  in  a  constantly  changing  development 
and   modification   of  that  tradition.     It   is  well 


Of  General  Conduct  267 

to  bring  that  factor  of  constant  change  into  mind 
at  the  outset  of  this  discussion  and  to  keep  it 
there.  To  forget  it,  and  it  is  commonly  forgotten, 
is  to  falsify  every  issue.  Marriage  and  the  Family 
are  perennially  fluctuating  institutions,  and  prob- 
ably scarcely  anything  in  modern  life  has  changed 
and  is  changing  so  much;  they  are  in  their  legal 
constitution  or  their  moral  and  emotional  quality, 
profoundly  different  things  from  what  they  were 
a  hundred  years  ago.  A  woman  who  marries 
nowadays  marries,  if  one  may  put  it  quantita- 
tively, far  less  than  she  did  even  half  a  century 
ago;  the  married  woman's  property  act,  for 
example,  has  revolutionised  the  economic  rela- 
tionship, her  husband  has  lost  his  right  to  assault 
her  and  he  cannot  even  compel  her  to  cohabit 
with  him  if  she  refuses  to  do  so.  Legal  separa- 
tions and  divorces  have  come  to  modify  the  quality 
and  logical  consequences  of  the  bond.  The  rights 
of  parent  over  the  child  have  been  even  more 
completely  qualified.  The  State  has  come  in  as 
protector  and  educator  of  the  children,  taking  over 
personal  powers  and  responsibilities  that  have 
been  essential  to  the  family  institution  ever  since 
the  dawn  of  history.  It  inserts  itself  more  and 
more  between  child  and  parent.  It  invades  what 
were  once  the  most  sacred  intimacies,  and  the 


268  First  and  Last  Things 

Salvation  Army  is  now  promoting  legislation  to 
invade  those  overcrowded  homes  in  which  chil- 
dren (it  is  estimated  to  the  number  of  thirty  or 
forty  thousand)  are  living  as  I  write,  vassals  of 
the  sacred  bond  of  the  family,  daily  witnesses  of 
their  mother's  prostitution  or  in  constant  danger 
of  incestuous  attack  from  drunken  fathers  and 
brothers.  And  finally  as  another  indication  of 
profound  differences,  births  were  almost  univer- 
sally accidental  a  hundred  years  ago;  they  are 
now  in  an  increasing  number  of  families  controlled 
and  deliberate  acts  of  will.  In  every  one  of  their 
relations  do  Marriage  and  the  Family  change  and 
continue  to  change. 

But  the  inherent  defectiveness  of  the  human 
mind  which  my  metaphysical  book  sets  itself  to 
analyse,  does  lead  it  constantly  to  speak  of 
Marriage  and  the  Family  as  things  as  fixed  and 
unalterable  as,  let  us  say  the  characteristics  of 
oxygen.  One  is  asked,  do  you  believe  in  Marriage 
and  the  Family  ?  as  if  it  was  a  case  of  either  having 
or  not  having  some  definite  thing.  Socialists  are 
accused  of  being  "against  the  Family,"  as  if  it 
were  not  the  case  that  Socialists,  Individualists, 
high  Anglicans  and  Roman  Catholics  are  all 
against  Marriage  and  the  Family  as  these  institu- 
tions exist  at  the  present  time.     But  once  we 


Of  General  Conduct  269 

have  realised  the  absurdity  of  this  absolute  treat- 
ment, then  it  should  become  clear  that  with  it 
goes  most  of  the  fabric  of  right  and  wrong,  and 
nearly  all  those  arbitrary  standards  by  which  we 
classify  people  into  moral  and  immoral.     Those 
last  words  are  used  when  as  a  matter  of  fact  we 
mean  either  conforming  or  failing  to  conform  to 
changing  laws  and  developing  institutional  cus- 
toms we  may  or  may  not  consider  right  or  wrong. 
Their  use  imparts  a  flavour  of  essential  wrong- 
doing and  obliquity  into  acts  and  relations  that 
may  be  in  many  cases  no  more  than  social  in- 
discipline,   which    may    be    even    conceivably    a 
courageous  act  of  defiance  to  an  obsolescent  limi- 
tation.    Such,    until    a   little   while    ago,    was   a 
man's    cohabitation    with    his    deceased    wife's 
sister.     This,  which  was  scandalous  yesterday,  is 
now  a  legally  honourable  relationship,   albeit  I 
believe  still  regarded  by  the  high  Anglican  an 
incestuous   wickedness. 

Now  I  will  not  deal  here  with  the  institutional 
changes  that  are  involved  in  that  general  scheme 
of  progress  called  Socialism.  I  have  discussed 
the  relation  of  Socialism  to  Marriage  and  the 
Family  quite  fully  in  my  New  Worlds  for  Old  l 
and  to  that  I  must  refer  the  reader.  Therein  he 
»  New  Worlds  for  Old  (A.  Constable  &  Co.,  190S). 


270  First  and  Last  Things 

will  see  how  the  economic  freedom  and  independ- 
ent citizenship  of  women  and  indeed  also  the  wel- 
fare of  the  whole  next  generation  hang  on  the 
idea  of  endowing  motherhood,  and  he  will  find 
too  how  much  of  the  nature  of  the  marriage  con- 
tract is  outside  the  scope  of  Socialist  proposals 
altogether. 

Apart  from  the  broad  proposals  of  Socialism, 
as  a  matter  of  personal  conviction  quite  out- 
side the  scope  of  Socialism  altogether,  I  am 
persuaded  of  the  need  of  much  greater  facili- 
ties of  divorce  than  exist  at  present,  divorce, 
on  the  score  of  mutual  consent,  of  faithless- 
ness, of  simple  cruelty,  of  insanity,  habitual 
vice  or  the  prolonged  imprisonment  of  either 
party.  And  this  being  so  I  find  it  impossible  to 
condemn  on  any  ground  except  that  it  is  ''break- 
ing ranks"  and  making  a  confusion,  those  who  by 
anticipating  such  wide  facilities  as  I  propose  have 
sinned  by  existing  standards.  How  far  and  in 
what  manner  such  breaking  of  ranks  is  to  be 
condoned  I  will  presently  discuss.  But  it  is  clear 
it  is  an  offence  of  a  different  nature  from  actions 
one  believed  to  be  in  themselves  and  apart  from 
the  law,  reprehensible  things. 

But  my  scepticisms  about  the  current  legal 
institutions    and    customary    code    are    not    ex- 


Of  General  Conduct  271 

hausted  by  these  modifications  I  have  suggested. 
I  believe  firmly  in  some  sort  of  marriage,  that  is 
to  say  an  open  declaration  of  the  existence  of 
sexual  relations  between  man  and  woman,   be- 
cause I  am  averse  to  all  unnecessary  secrecies  and 
because  the  existence  of  these  peculiarly  intimate 
relationships  affects  everybody  about  the  persons 
concerned.     It  is  ridiculous  to  say  as  some  do  that 
sexual  relations  between  two  people  affect  no  one 
but  themselves  unless  a  child  is  born.     They  do, 
because  they  tend  to  break  down  barriers  and 
set-up  a  peculiar  emotional  partnership.     It  is  a 
partnership  that  kept  secret  may  work  as  anti- 
socially  as  a  secret  business  partnership  or  a  se- 
cret preferential  railway  tariff.     And  I  believe  too 
in  the  general  social  desirability  of  the  family 
group,  the  normal  group  of  fathers  and  mother  and 
children  and  in  the  extreme  efficacy  in  the  normal 
human  being  of  the  blood  link  and  pride  link 
between  parent  and  child  in  securing  loving  care 
and   upbringing   for    the    child.     But   this    clear 
adhesion  to  Marriage  and  to  the  Family  grouping 
about  mother  and  father  does  not  close  the  door 
to  a  large  series  of  exceptional  cases  which  our 
existing  institutions  and  customs  ignore  or  crush. 
For  example,  monogamy  in  general  seems  to 
me  to  be  clearly  indicated  (as  doctors  say)  by  the 


272  First  and  Last  Things 

fact  that  there  are  not  several  women  in  the 
world  for  every  man,  but  quite  as  clearly  does  it 
seem  necessary  to  recognise  that  the  fact  that 
there  are  (or  were  in  1901)  21,436,107  women  to 
20,172,984  men  in  our  British  community  seems 
to  condemn  our  present  rigorous  insistence  upon 
monogamy,  unless  feminine  celibacy  has  its  own 
delights.  But,  as  I  have  said,  it  is  now  largely 
believed  that  the  sexual  life  of  a  woman  is  more 
important  to  her  than  his  sexual  life  to  a  man 
and  less  easily  ignored. 

It  is  true  also  on  the  former  side  that  for  the 
great  majority  of  people  one  knows  personally, 
any  sort  of  household  but  a  monogamous  one 
conjures  up  painful  and  unpleasant  visions.  The 
ordinary  civilised  woman  and  the  ordinary  civil- 
ised man  are  alike  obsessed  with  the  idea  of 
meeting  and  possessing  one  peculiar  intimate 
person,  one  special  exclusive  lover  who  is  their 
very  own,  and  a  third  person  of  either  sex  cannot 
be  associated  with  that  couple  without  an  in- 
tolerable sense  of  privacy  and  confidence  and 
possession  destroyed.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  a 
second  wife  in  a  home,  who  would  not  be  and  feel 
herself  to  be  a  rather  excluded  and  inferior  per- 
son. But  that  does  not  abolish  the  possibility  that 
there  are  exceptional  people  somewhere  capable 


Of  General  Conduct  273 

of,  to  coin  a  phrase,  triangular  mutuality,  and  I 
do  not  see  why  we  should  either  forbid  or  treat 
with  bitterness  or  hostility  a  grouping  we  may 
consider  so  inadvisable  or  so  unworkable  as  never 
to  be  adopted,  if  three  people  of  their  own  free 
will  desire  it. 

The  peculiar  defects  of  the  human  mind  when 
they  approach  these  questions  of  sex  are  rein- 
forced by  passions  peculiar  to  the  topic,  and  it  is 
perhaps  advisable  to  point  out  that  to  discuss  these 
possibilities  is  not  the  same  thing  as  to  urge  the 
married  reader  to  take  unto  himself  or  herself  a 
second  partner  or  a  series  of  additional  partners. 
We  are  trained  from  the  nursery  to  become 
secretive,  muddle-headed  and  vehemently  con- 
clusive upon  sexual  matters,  until  at  last  the 
editors  of  magazines  blush  at  the  very  phrase  and 
long  to  put  a  petticoat  over  the  page  that  bears  it. 
Yet  our  rebellious  natures  insist  on  being  in- 
terested by  it.  It  seems  to  me  that  to  judge 
these  large  questions  from  the  personal  point  of 
view,  to  insist  upon  the  whole  world  without 
exception  living  exactly  in  the  manner  that 
suits  oneself  or  accords  with  one's  emotional 
imagination  and  the  forms  of  delicacy  in  which 
one  has  been  trained,  is  not  the  proper  way  to 

deal  with  them.     I  want  as  a  sane  social  organiser 
18 


274  First  and  Last  Things 

to  get  just  as  many  contented  and  law-abiding 
citizens  as  possible ;  I  do  not  want  to  force  people 
who  would  otherwise  be  useful  citizens  into  rebel- 
lion, concealments  and  the  dark  and  furtive  ways 
of  vice,  because  they  may  not  love  and  marry  as 
their  temperaments  command,  and  so  I  want  to 
make  the  meshes  of  the  law  as  wide  as  possible. 
But  the  common  man  will  not  understand  this 
yet,  and  seeks  to  make  the  meshes  just  as  small 
as  his  own  private  case  demands. 

Then  marriage,  to  resume  my  main  discussion, 
does  not  necessarily  mean  cohabitation.  All 
women  who  desire  children  do  not  want  to  be 
entrusted  with  their  upbringing.  Some  women 
are  sexual  and  philoprogenitive  without  being 
sedulously  maternal,  and  some  are  maternal 
without  much  or  any  sexual  passion.  There  are 
men  and  women  in  the  world  now,  great  allies, 
fond  and  passionate  lovers  who  do  not  live  nor 
want  to  live  constantly  together.  It  is  at  least 
conceivable  that  there  are  women  who,  while 
desiring  offspring,  do  not  want  to  abandon  great 
careers  for  the  work  of  maternity,  women  again 
who  would  be  happiest  managing  and  rearing 
children  in  manless  households  that  they  might 
even  share  with  other  women  friends,  and  men 
to  correspond  with  those  who  do  not  wish  to  live 


Of  General  Conduct  275 

in  a  household  with  wife  and  children.  I  submit, 
these  temperaments  exist  and  have  a  right  to  exist 
in  their  own  way.  But  one  must  recognise  the 
possibility  of  these  departures  from  the  normal 
type  of  household  opens  up  other  possibilities. 
The  polygamy  that  is  degrading  or  absurd  under 
one  roof  assumes  a  different  appearance  when  one 
considers  it  from  the  point  of  view  of  people  whose 
habit  of  life  does  not  centre  upon  an  isolated  home. 
All  the  relations  I  have  glanced  at  above  do 
as  a  matter  of  fact  exist  to-day,  but  shamefully 
and  shabbily,  tainted  with  what  seems  to  me  an 
unmerited  and  unnecessary  ignominy.  The  pun- 
ishment for  bigamy  seems  to  me  insane  in  its 
severity,  contrasted  as  it  is  with  our  leniency  to 
the  common  seducer.  Better  ruin  a  score  of 
women,  says  the  law,  than  marry  two.  I  do  not 
see  why  in  these  matters  there  should  not  be 
much  ampler  freedom  than  there  is,  and  this 
being  so  I  can  hardly  be  expected  to  condemn 
with  any  moral  fervour  or  exclude  from  my  so- 
ciety those  who  have  seen  fit  to  behave  by  what 
I  believe  may  be  the  standards  of  a.d.  2000 
instead  of  by  the  standards  of  1850.  These  are 
offences,  so  far  as  they  are  offences,  on  an  alto- 
gether different  footing  from  murder,  or  exacting 
usury,  or  the  sweating  of  children,  or  cruelty,  or 


276  First  and  Last  Things 

transmitting  diseases,  or  unveracity,  or  commercial 
or  intellectual  or  physical  prostitution,  or  any 
such  essentially  grave  anti-social  deeds.  We  must 
distinguish  between  sins  and  mere  errors  of 
judgment  and  differences  of  taste  from  ourselves. 
To  draw  up  harsh  laws,  to  practise  exclusions 
against  everyone  who  does  not  see  fit  to  duplicate 
one's  own  blameless  home  life,  is  to  waste  a 
number  of  courageous  and  exceptional  persons 
in  every  generation,  to  drive  many  of  them  into 
a  forced  alliance  with  real  crime  and  embittered 
rebellion  against  custom  and  the  law. 


§  29. 

Conduct  in  Relation  to  the  Thing  that  Is. 
— But  the  reader  must  keep  clear  in  his  mind  the 
distinction  between  conduct  that  is  right  or  per- 
missible in  itself  and  conduct  that  becomes  either 
inadvisable  or  mischievous  and  wrong  because  of 
the  circumstances  about  it.  There  is  no  harm 
under  ordinary  conditions  in  asking  a  boy  with  a 
pleasant  voice  to  sing  a  song  in  the  night,  but 
the  case  is  altered  altogether  if  you  have  reason 
to  suppose  that  a  Red  Indian  is  lying  in  wait  a 
hundred  yards  off,  holding  a  loaded  rifle  and  ready 
to  fire  at  the  voice.  It  is  a  valid  objection  to  many 
actions  that  I  do  not  think  objectionable  in  them- 
selves, that  to  do  them  will  discharge  a  loaded 
prejudice  into  the  heart  of  my  friend — or  even 
into  my  own.  I  belong  to  the  world  and  my 
work,  and  I  must  not  lightly  throw  my  time,  my 
power,  my  influence  away.  For  a  splendid  thing 
any  risk  or  any  defiance  may  be  justifiable,  but 
is  it  a  sufficiently  splendid  thing?  So  far  as  he 
possibly  can  a  man   must  conform  to  common 

prejudices,    prevalent    customs   and    all    laws, — 

277. 


278  First  and  Last  Things 

whatever  his  estimate  of  them  may  be.  But  he 
must  at  the  same  time  do  his  utmost  to  change 
what  he  thinks  to  be  wrong. 

And  I  think  that  conformity  must  be  honest 
conformity.  There  is  no  more  anti-social  act 
than  secret  breaches,  and  only  some  very  urgent 
and  exceptional  occasion  justifies  even  the  un- 
veracity  of  silence  about  the  thing  done.  If  your 
personal  convictions  bring  you  to  a  breach,  let  it 
be  an  open  breach,  let  there  be  no  misrepresenta- 
tion of  attitudes,  no  organised  fabric  of  lies,  no 
deception  of  honourable  friends.  Of  course  an 
open  breach  need  not  be  an  ostentatious  breach- 
to  do  what  is  right  to  yourself  without  fraud  or 
concealment  is  one  thing,  to  make  a  challenge  and 
aggression  quite  another.  Your  friends  may 
understand  and  sympathise  and  condone,  but 
it  does  not  lie  upon  you  to  force  them  to  identify 
themselves  with  your  act  and  situation.  But 
better  too  much  openness  than  too  little.  Squalid 
intrigue  was  the  shadow  of  the  old  intolerably 
narrow  order ;  it  is  a  shadow  we  want  to  illuminate 
out  of  existence.  Secrets  will  be  contraband 
in  the  new  time. 

And  if  it  chances  to  you  to  feel  called  upon  to 
make  a  breach  with  the  institution  or  custom  or 
prejudice  that  is,  remember  that  doing  so  is  your 


Of  General  Conduct  279 

own  affair.  You  are  going  to  take  risks  and 
specialise  as  an  experiment.  You  must  not  expect 
other  people  about  you  to  share  the  consequences 
of  your  dash  forward.  You  must  not  drag  in 
confidants  and  secondaries.  You  must  fight  your 
little  battle  in  front  on  your  own  responsibility, 
unsupported — and  take  the  consequences  without 
repining. 


§3<>. 

Conduct  towards  Transgressions. — So  far 
as  breaches  of  the  prohibitions  and  laws  of  mar- 
riage go,  to  me  it  seems  they  are  to  be  tolerated 
by  us  in  others  just  in  the  measure  that,  within 
the  limits  set  by  discretion,  they  are  frank  and 
truthful  and  animated  by  spontaneous  passion 
and  pervaded  by  the  quality  of  beauty.  I  hate 
the  vulgar  sexual  intriguer,  man  or  woman,  and 
the  smart  and  shallow  atmosphere  of  unloving 
lust  and  vanity  about  the  type,  as  I  hate  few 
kinds  of  human  life ;  I  would  as  lief  have  a  polecat 
in  my  home,  and  this  sort  of  person  and  every 
sort  of  prostitute  except  the  victim  of  utter  neces- 
sity I  despise,  even  though  marriage  be  the  fee. 
But  honest  lovers  should  be,  I  think,  a  charge 
and  pleasure  for  us.  We  must  judge  each  pair 
as  we  can. 

One  thing  renders  a  sexual  relationship  in- 
curably offensive  to  others  and  altogether  wrong, 
and  that  is  cruelty. 

But  who  can  define  cruelty?    How  far  is  the 

leaving  of  a  third  person  to  count  as  cruelty? 

280 


Of  General  Conduct  281 

There  again  I  hesitate  to  judge.  To  love  and  not 
be  loved  is  a  fate  for  which  it  seems  no  one  can  be 
blamed;  to  lose  love  and  to  change  one's  loving 
belongs  to  a  subtle  interplay  beyond  analysis  or 
control,  but  to  be  deceived  or  mocked  or  deliber- 
ately robbed  of  love,  that  at  any  rate  is  an  abom- 
inable wrong. 

In  all  these  matters  I  perceive  a  general  rule  is 
in  itself  a  possible  instrument  of  cruelty.  I  set 
down  what  I  can  in  the  way  of  general  principles, 
but  it  all  leaves  off  far  short  of  the  point  of  ap- 
plication. In  every  case  among  those  we  know 
I  think  we  moderns  must  judge  for  ourselves. 
Where  there  is  doubt,  there  I  hold  must  be 
Charity.  And  with  regard  to  strangers  mani- 
festly our  duty  is  to  avoid  inquisitorial  and 
uncharitable  acts. 

This  is  as  true  of  financial  and  economic  mis- 
conduct as  of  sexual  misconduct,  of  ways  of 
living  that  are  socially  harmful  and  of  political 
faith.  We  are  dealing  with  people  in  a  mal- 
adjusted system  to  whom  absolute  right  living  is 
practically  impossible,  because  there  are  no  ab- 
solutely right  institutions  and  no  simple  choice  of 
good  or  evil,  and  we  have  to  balance  merits  and 
defects  in  every  case. 

Some   people   are   manifestly   and   essentially 


282  First  and  Last  Things 

base  and  self-seeking  and  regardless  of  the  happi- 
ness and  welfare  of  their  fellows,  some  in  business 
affairs  and  politics  as  others  in  love.  Some 
wrong-doers  again  are  evidently  so  through 
heedlessness,  through  weakness,  timidity  or  haste. 
We  have  to  judge  and  deal  with  each  sort  upon 
no  clear  issue  but  upon  impressions  they  have 
given  us  of  their  spirit  and  purpose.  We  owe 
it  to  them  and  ourselves  not  to  judge  too  rashly 
or  too  harshly,  but  for  all  that  we  are  obliged  to 
judge  and  take  sides,  to  avoid  the  malignant  and 
exclude  them  from  further  opportunity,  to  help 
and  champion  the  cheated  and  the  betrayed,  to 
forgive  and  aid  the  repentant  blunderer  and  by 
mercy  to  save  the  lesser  sinner  from  desperate 
alliance  with  the  greater.  That  is  the  broad  rule 
and  it  is  as  much  as  we  have  to  go  upon  until  the 
individual  case  comes  before  us. 


Book  the  Fourth, 
Some  Personal  Things. 


283 


§1. 


Personal  Love  and  Life. — It  has  been  most 
convenient  to  discuss  all  that  might  be  generalised 
about  conduct  first,  to  put  in  the  common  back- 
ground the  vistas  and  atmosphere  of  the  scene. 
But  a  man's  relations  are  of  two  orders,  and  these 
questions  of  rule  and  principle  are  over  and  about 
and  round  more  vivid  and  immediate  interests. 
A  man  is  not  simply  a  relationship  between  his 
individual  self  and  the  race,  society,  the  world 
and  God's  Purpose.  Close  about  him  are  per- 
sons, friends  and  enemies  and  lovers  and  beloved 
and  beautiful  people.  He  desires  them,  lusts 
after  them,  craves  their  affection,  needs  their 
presence,  abhors  them,  hates  and  desires  to 
limit  and  suppress  them.  This  is  for  most  of  us 
the  flesh  and  blood  of  life.  We  go  through  the 
noble  scene  of  the  world  neither  alone  nor  alone 
with  God,  nor  serving  an  undistinguishable  mul- 
titude, but  in  a  company  of  individualised  people. 

Here  is  a  system  of  motives  and  passions,  im- 
perious  and   powerful,   which   follows   no   broad 

general  rule  and  in  which  each  man  must  needs 

285 


286  First  and  Last  Things 

be  a  light  unto  himself  upon  innumerable  issues. 
I  am  satisfied  that  these  personal  urgencies  are 
neither  to  be  suppressed  nor  crudely  or  ruthlessly 
subordinated  to  the  general  issues.  Religious 
and  moral  teachers  are  apt  to  make  this  part  of 
life  either  too  detached  or  too  insignificant.  They 
teach  it  either  as  if  it  did  not  matter  or  as  if  it 
ought  not  to  matter.  Indeed  our  individual 
friends  and  enemies  stand  between  us  and  hide  or 
interpret  for  us  all  the  larger  things.  Few  of  us 
can  even  worship  alone.  We  must  feel  others, 
and  those  not  strangers,  kneeling  beside  us. 

I  have  already  spoken  under  the  heading  of 
Beliefs  of  the  part  that  the  idea  of  a  Mediator 
has  played  and  can  play  in  the  religious  life.  I 
have  pointed  out  how  the  imagination  of  men 
has  sought  and  found  in  certain  personalities, 
historical  or  fictitious,  a  bridge  between  the 
blood-warm  private  life  and  the  intolerable 
spaciousness  of  right  and  wrong.  The  world  is 
full  of  such  figures  and  their  images,  Christ  and 
Mary  and  the  Saints  and  all  the  lesser,  dearer  gods 
of  heathendom.  These  things  and  the  human 
passion  for  living  leaders  and  heroes  and  leagues 
and  brotherhoods  all  confess  the  mediatory  role, 
the  mediatory  possibilities  of  personal  love  be- 
tween the  individual  and  the  great  synthesis  of 


Some  Personal  Things  287 

which  he  is  a  part  and  agent.  The  great  synthesis 
may  become  incarnate  in  personal  love,  and 
personal  love  lead  us  directly  to  universal  service. 
I  write  may,  and  temper  that  sentence  to  the 
quality  of  a  possibility  alone.  This  is  only  true 
for  those  who  believe,  for  those  who  have  faith, 
whose  lives  have  been  unified,  who  have  found 
Salvation.  For  those  whose  lives  are  chaotic, 
personal  loves  must  also  be  chaotic;  this  or  that 
passion,  malice,  a  jesting  humour,  some  physical 
lust,  gratified  vanity,  egotistical  pride,  will  rule 
and  limit  the  relationship  and  colour  its  ultimate 
futility.  But  the  Believer  uses  personal  love 
and  sustains  himself  by  personal  love.  It  is  his 
provender,  the  meat  and  drink  of  his  campaign. 


§2. 

The  Nature  of  Love. — It  is  well  perhaps  to 
look  a  little  into  the  factors  that  make  up  love. 

Love  does  not  seem  to  me  to  be  a  simple  ele- 
mental thing.  It  is,  as  I  have  already  said,  one 
of  the  vicious  tendencies  of  the  human  mind  to 
think  that  whatever  can  be  given  a  simple  name 
can  be  abstracted  as  a  single  something  in  a  state 
of  quintessential  purity.  I  have  pointed  out  that 
this  is  not  true  of  Harmony  nor  Beauty,  and  that 
these  are  synthetic  things.  You  bring  together 
this  which  is  not  beautiful  and  that  which  is  not 
beautiful,  and  behold!  Beauty!  So  also  love  is, 
I  think,  a  synthetic  thing.  One  observes  this 
and  that,  one  is  interested  and  stirred;  suddenly 
the  metal  fuses,  the  dry  bones  live !     One  loves. 

Almost  every  interest  in  one's  being  may  be  a 
factor  in  the  love  synthesis.  But  apart  from 
the  overflowing  of  the  parental  instinct  that  makes 
all  that  is  fine  and  delicate  and  young  dear  to  us 
and  to  be  cherished,  there  are  two  main  factors 
that  bring  us  into  love  with  our  fellows.     There  is 

first  the  emotional  elements  in  our  nature  that 

288 


Some  Personal  Things  289 

arise  out  of  the  tribal  necessity,  out  of  a  fellow- 
ship in  battle  and  hunting,  drinking  and  feasting, 
out  of  the  needs  and  excitements  and  delights 
of  those  occupations;  and  there  is  next  the  in- 
tenser  narrower  desirings  and  gratitudes,  satis- 
factions and  expectations  that  come  from  sexual 
intercourse.  Now  both  these  factors  originate 
in  physical  needs  and  consummate  in  material 
acts,  and  it  is  well  to  remember  that  this  great 
growth  of  love  in  life  roots  there,  and,  it  may  be, 
dies  when  its  roots  are  altogether  cut  away. 

At  its  lowest,  love  is  the  mere  sharing  of,  or 
rather  the  desire  to  share,  pleasure  and  excite- 
ment, the  excitements  of  conflict  01  lust  or  what 
not.  I  think  that  the  desire  to  partake,  the 
desire  to  merge  one's  individual  identity  with 
another's,  remains  a  necessary  element  in  all 
personal  loves.  It  is  a  way  out  of  ourselves,  a 
breaking  down  of  our  individual  separation,  just  as 
hate  is  an  intensification  of  that.  Personal  love 
is  the  narrow  and  intense  form  of  that  breaking 
down,  just  as  what  I  call  Salvation  is  its  widest, 
most  extensive  form.  We  cast  aside  our  reserves, 
our  secrecies,  our  defences;  we  open  ourselves; 
touches  that  would  be  intolerable  from  common 
people  become  a  mystery  of  delight;  acts  of  self- 
abasement   and    self-sacrifice    are    charged    with 

10 


290  First  and  Last  Things 

symbolical  pleasure.  We  cannot  tell  which  of  us 
is  me,  which  you.  Our  imprisoned  egoism  looks 
out  through  this  window,  forgets  its  wall  and  is 
for  those  brief  moments  released  and  universal. 

For  most  of  us  the  strain  of  primordial  sexual 
emotion  in  our  love  is  very  strong.  Many  men 
can  love  only  women,  many  women  only  men, 
and  some  can  scarcely  love  at  all  without  bodily 
desire.  But  the  love  of  fellowship  is  a  strong  one 
also,  and  for  many,  love  is  most  possible  and 
easy  when  the  thought  of  physical  love-making 
has  been  banished.  Then  the  lovers  will  pursue 
other  interests  together,  will  work  together  or 
journey  together.  So  we  have  the  warm  fellow- 
ships of  men  for  men  and  women  for  women. 
But  even  then  it  may  happen  that  men  friends 
together  will  talk  of  women,  and  women  friends 
of  men.  Nevertheless  we  have  also  the  strong 
and  altogether  sexless  glow  of  those  who  have 
fought  well  together,  or  drunk  or  jested  together 
or  hunted  a  common  quarry. 

Now  it  seems  to  me  that  the  Believer  must  also 
be  a  Lover,  that  he  will  love  as  much  as  he  can 
and  as  many  people  as  he  can,  and  in  many  moods 
and  ways.  As  I  have  said  already,  many  of  those 
who  have  taught  religion  and  morality  in  the  past 
have  been  neglectful  or  unduly  jealous  of  the 


Some  Personal  Things  291 

in  tenser  personal  loves.  They  have  been,  to  put 
it  by  a  figure,  urgent  upon  the  road  to  the  ocean. 
To  that  they  would  lead  us,  though  we  come  to 
it  shivering,  fearful  and  unprepared,  and  they 
grudge  it  that  we  should  strip  and  plunge  into 
the  wayside  stream.  But  all  streams,  all  rivers, 
come  from  this  ocean  in  the  beginning,  lead  back 
to  it  in  the  end. 

It  is  the  essential  fact  of  love  as  I  conceive  it, 
that  it  breaks  down  the  boundaries  of  self.  That 
love  is  most  perfect  which  does  most  completely 
merge  its  lovers.  But  no  love  is  altogether  per- 
fect, and  for  most  men  and  women  love  is  no  more 
than  a  partial  and  temporary  lowering  of  the 
barriers  that  keep  them  apart.  With  many,  the 
attraction  of  love  seems  always  to  fall  short  of 
what  I  hold  to  be  its  end ;  it  draws  people  together 
in  the  most  momentary  of  self -forgetfuln ess,  and 
for  the  rest  seems  rather  to  enhance  their  ego- 
tisms and  their  difference.  They  are  secret  from 
one  another  even  in  their  embraces.  There  is  a 
sort  of  love  that  is  egotistical  lust  almost  regard- 
less of  its  partner,  a  sort  of  love  that  is  mere  flesh- 
less  pride  and  vanity  at  a  white  heat.  There  is 
the  love-making  that  springs  from  sheer  bore- 
dom, like  a  man  reading  a  story-book  to  fill  an 
hour.     These  inferior  loves  seek  to  accomplish  an 


292  First  and  Last  Things 

agreeable  act,  or  they  seek  the  pursuit  or  glory 
of  a  living  possession,  they  aim  at  gratification  or 
excitement  or  conquest.  True  love  seeks  to  be 
mutual  and  easy-minded,  free  of  doubts,  but 
these  egotistical  mockeries  of  love  have  always 
resentment  in  them  and  hatred  in  them  and  a 
watchful  distrust.  Jealousy  is  the  measure  of 
self-love  in  love. 

True  love  is  a  synthetic  thing,  an  outcome  of 
life,  it  is  not  a  universal  thing.  It  is,  I  hold,  the 
individualised  correlative  of  Salvation;  like  that 
it  is  a  synthetic  consequence  of  conflicts  and  con- 
fusions. Many  people  do  not  desire  or  need  Sal- 
vation, they  cannot  understand  it,  much  less  can 
they  achieve  it;  for  them  chaotic  life  suffices. 
So  too,  very  many  never,  save  for  some  rare  mo- 
ment of  illumination,  desire  or  feel  love.  Its 
happy  abandonment,  its  careless  self -giving,  these 
things  are  mere  foolishness  to  them.  But  much 
has  been  said  and  sung  of  faith  and  love  alike, 
and  in  their  confused  greed  these  things  also  they 
desire  and  parody.  So  they  act  worship,  they 
make  a  fine  fuss  of  their  devotions.  And  also 
they  must  have  a  few  half- furtive,  half -flaunting 
fallen  love-triumphs  prowling  the  secret  back- 
streets  of  their  lives,  they  know  not  why. 

(In  setting  this  down  be  it  remembered  I  am 


Some  Personal  Things  293 

doing  my  best  to  tell  what  is  in  me  because  I  am 
trying  to  put  my  whole  view  of  life  before  the 
reader  without  any  vital  omissions.  These  are 
difficult  matters  to  explain  because  they  have  no 
clear  outlines;  one  lets  in  a  hard  light  suddenly 
upon  things  that  have  lurked  in  warm  intimate 
shadows,  dim  inner  things  engendering  motives. 
I  am  not  only  telling  quasi-secret  things  but  explor- 
ing them  for  myself.  They  are  none  the  less  real 
and  important  because  they  are  elusive.) 

True  love  I  think  is  not  simply  felt  but  known. 
Just  as  Salvation  as  I  conceive  it  demands  a  fine 
intelligence  and  mental  activity,  so  love  calls  to 
brain  and  body  alike  and  all  one's  powers,  there 
is  always  elaborate  thinking  and  dreaming  in 
love.  Love  will  stir  imaginations  that  have  never 
stirred  before. 

Love  may  be  and  is  for  the  most  part  one-sided. 
It  is  the  going  out  from  oneself  that  is  love  and 
not  the  accident  of  its  return.  It  is  the  expedi- 
tion whether  it  fail  or  succeed. 

But  an  expedition  starves  that  comes  to  no 
port.  Love  seeks  mutuality  and  grows  by  the 
sense  and  hope  of  responses,  or  we  should  love 
beautiful  inanimate  things  more  than  we  do. 
Failing  a  full  return,  it  makes  the  most  of  an 
inadequate   return.     Failing   a   sustained    return 


294  First  and  Last  Things 

it  welcomes  a  temporary  coincidence.  But  it  seeks 
a  full  return  always,  and  the  fulness  of  life  has 
come  only  to  those  who,  loving,  have  met  the 
lover. 

I  am  trying  to  be  as  explicit  as  possible  in  thus 
writing  about  Love.  But  the  substance  in  which 
one  works  here  is  emotion  that  evades  definition; 
poetic  flashes  and  figures  of  speech  are  truer  than 
prosaic  statements.  Body,  and  the  most  sub- 
limated ecstasy  pass  into  one  another,  exchange 
themselves,  and  elude  every  net  of  words  we 
cast. 

I  have  put  out  two  ideas  of  unification  and 
self-devotion,  extremes  upon  a  scale  one  from 
another ;  one  of  these  ideas  is  that  devotion  to  the 
Purpose  in  things  I  have  called  Salvation;  the 
other  that  devotion  to  some  other  most  fitting 
and  satisfying  individual  which  is  passionate 
love,  the  former  extensive  as  the  universe,  the 
latter  the  intensest  thing  in  life.  These  it  seems 
to  me  are  the  boundary  and  the  living  capital  of 
the  empire  of  life  we  rule. 

All  empires  need  a  comprehending  boundary, 
but  many  have  not  one  capital  but  many  chief 
cities,  and  all  have  cities  and  towns  and  villages 
beyond  the  capital.  It  is  an  impoverished  capital 
that  has  no  dependent  towns,  and  it  is  a  poor  love 


Some  Personal  Things  295 

that  will  not  overflow  in  affection  and  eager  kindly 
curiosity  and  sympathy  and  the  search  for  fresh 
mutuality.  To  love  is  to  go  loving  radiantly 
through  the  world.  To  love  and  be  loved  is  to 
be  fearless  of  experience  and  rich  in  the  power  to 
give. 


§3- 


The  Will  to  Love. — Love  is  a  thing  to  a  large 
extent  in  its  beginnings  voluntary  and  controlla- 
ble, and  at  last  quite  involuntary.  It  is  so  hedged 
about  by  obligations  and  consequences,  real  and 
artificial,  that  for  the  most  part  I  think  people 
are  overmuch  afraid  of  it.  And  also  the  tradition 
of  sentiment  that  suggests  its  forms  and  guides 
it  in  the  world  about  us,  is  far  too  strongly  ex- 
clusive. It  is  not  so  much  when  love  is  glowing 
as  when  it  is  becoming  habitual  that  it  is  jealous 
for  itself  and  others.  Lovers  a  little  exhausting 
their  mutual  interest  find  a  fillip  in  an  alliance 
against  the  world.  They  bury  their  talent  of 
understanding  and  sympathy  to  return  it  duly 
in  a  clean  napkin.  They  narrow  their  interest 
in  life  lest  the  other  lover  should  misunderstand 
their  amplitude  as  disloyalty. 

Our  institutions  and  social  customs  seem  all  to 
assume  a  definiteness  of  preference,  a  singleness 
and  a  limitation  of  love,  which  is  not  psychologi- 
cally justifiable.     People   do  not,    I    think,    fall 

naturally  into  agreement  with  these  assumptions; 

296 


Some  Personal  Things  297 

they  train  themselves  to  agreement.  They  take 
refuge  from  experiences  that  seem  to  carry  with 
them  the  risk  at  least  of  perplexing  situations,  in 
a  theory  of  barred  possibilities  and  locked  doors. 
How  far  this  shy  and  cultivated  irresponsive 
lovelessness  towards  the  world  at  large  may  not 
carry  with  it  the  possibility  of  compensating  in- 
tensities, I  do  not  know.  Quite  equally  probable 
is  a  starvation  of  one's  emotional  nature. 

The  same  reasons  that  make  me  decide  against 
mere  wanton  abstinences  make  me  hostile  to  the 
common  convention  of  emotional  indifference  to 
most  of  the  charming  and  interesting  people  one 
encounters.  In  pleasing  and  being  pleased,  in 
the  mutual  interest,  the  mutual  opening  out  of 
people  to  one  another,  is  the  key  of  the  door  to 
all  sweet  and  mellow  living. 


§  4- 


Love  and  Death. — For  him  who  has  faith, 
death,  so  far  as  it  is  his  own  death,  ceases  to  pos- 
sess any  quality  of  terror.  The  experiment  will 
be  over,  the  rinsed  beaker  returned  to  its  shelf, 
the  crystals  gone  dissolving  down  the  wastepipe 
and  the  duster  sweeps  the  bench.  But  the  deaths 
of  those  we  love  are  harder  to  understand,  or  bear. 

It  happens  that  of  those  very  intimate  with 
me  I  have  lost  only  one,  and  that  came  slowly  and 
elaborately,  a  long  gradual  separation  wrought 
by  the  accumulation  of  years  and  mental  decay, 
but  many  close  friends  and  many  whom  I  have 
counted  upon  for  sympathy  and  fellowship  have 
passed  out  of  my  world.  I  miss  such  a  one  as 
Bob  Stevenson,  that  luminous,  extravagant  talker, 
that  eager  fantastic  mind.  I  miss  him  whenever 
I  write.  It  is  less  pleasure  now  to  write  a  story 
since  he  will  never  read  it,  much  less  give  a  word 
of  praise  for  it.  And  I  miss  York  Powell's 
friendly  laughter  and  Henley's  exuberant  wel- 
come.   They   made   a   warmth   that   has   gone, 

those  men.     I  can  understand  why  I,  with  my 

298 


Some  Personal  Things  299 

fumbling  lucidities  and  explanations,  have  to 
finish  up  presently  and  go,  expressing  as  I  do 
the  mood  of  a  type  and  of  a  time,  but  not  those 
radiant  presences. 

And  the  gap  these  men  have  left,  these 
men  with  whom  after  all  I  only  sat  now  and 
again,  or  wrote  to  in  a  cheerful  mood  or  got 
a  letter  from  at  odd  times,  gives  me  some 
measure  of  the  thing  that  happens,  that  may 
happen,  when  the  mind  that  is  always  near 
one's  thoughts,  the  person  who  moves  to  one's 
movement  and  lights  nearly  all  the  common 
flow  of  events  about  one  with  the  reminder 
of   fellowship  and   meaning — ceases. 

Faith  which  feeds  on  personal  love  must  at 
last  prevail  over  it.  If  Faith  has  any  virtue  it 
must  have  it  here  when  we  find  ourselves  bereft 
and  isolated,  facing  a  world  from  which  the  light 
has  fled,  leaving  it  bleak  and  strange.  We  live 
for  experience  and  the  race ;  these  individual  inter- 
ludes are  just  helps  to  that;  the  warm  inn  in 
which  we  lovers  met  and  refreshed  was  but  a 
halt  on  a  journey.  When  we  have  loved  to  the 
in  tensest  point  we  have  done  our  best  with  each 
other.  To  keep  to  that  image  of  the  inn,  we  must 
not  sit  overlong  at  our  wine  beside  the  fire.  We 
must  go  on  to  new  experiences  and  new  adven- 


300  First  and  Last  Things 

tures.  Death  comes  to  part  us  and  turn  us  out 
and  set  us  on  the  road  again. 

But  the  dead  stay  where  we  leave  them. 

I  suppose  that  is  the  real  good  in  death  that 
they  do  stay;  that  it  makes  them  immortal  for 
us.  Living  they  were  mortal.  But  now  they 
can  never  spoil  themselves  or  be  spoilt  by  change 
again.  They  have  finished — for  us  indeed  just 
as  much  as  themselves.  There  they  sit  for  ever, 
rounded  off  and  bright  and  done.  Beside  these 
clear  and  certain  memories  I  have  of  my  dead, 
my  impressions  of  the  living  are  vague  provisional 
things. 

And  since  they  are  gone  out  of  the  world  and 
become  immortal  memories  in  me,  I  feel  no  need 
to  think  of  them  as  in  some  disembodied  and 
incomprehensible  elsewhere,  changed  and  yet  not 
done.  I  want  actual  immortality  for  those  I  love 
as  little  as  I  desire  it  for  myself. 

Indeed  I  dislike  the  idea  that  those  I  have 
loved  are  immortal  in  any  real  sense ;  it  conjures 
up  dim  uncomfortable  drifting  phantoms  that 
have  no  kindred  with  the  flesh  and  blood  I  knew. 
I  would  as  soon  think  of  them  trailing  after  the 
tides  up  and  down  the  Channel  outside  my  win- 
dow. Bob  Stevenson  for  me  is  a  presence  utterly 
concrete,  slouching,  eager,  quick-eyed,  intimate 


Some  Personal  Things  301 

and  profound,  carelessly  dressed  (at  Sandgate  he 
commonly  wore  a  little  felt  hat  that  belonged  to 
his  son)  and  himself,  himself,  indissoluble  matter 
and  spirit,  down  to  the  heels  of  his  boots.  I 
cannot  conceive  of  his  as  any  but  a  concrete  im- 
mortality. If  he  lives,  he  lives  as  I  knew  him  and 
clothed  as  I  knew  him  and  with  his  unalterable 
voice,  in  a  heaven  of  daedal  flowers  or  a  hell  of 
ineffectual  flame,  he  lives,  dreaming  and  talking 
and  explaining,  explaining  it  all  very  earnestly 
and  preposterously,  so  I  picture  him,  into  the  ear 
of  the  amused,  incredulous  principal  person  in 
the  place. 

I  have  a  real  hatred  for  those  dreary  fools  and 
knaves  who  would  have  me  suppose  that  Henley, 
that  crippled  Titan,  may  conceivably  be  tapping 
at  the  underside  of  a  mahogany  table  or  scratching 
stifled  incoherence  into  a  locked  slate!  Henley 
tapping! — for  the  professional  purposes  of  Sludge! 
If  he  found  himself  among  the  circumstances  of 
a  spiritualist  seance,  he  would,  I  know,  instantly 
smash  the  table  with  that  big  fist  of  his.  And  as 
the  splinters  flew  surely  York  Powell  out  of  the 
dead  past  from  which  he  shines  on  me,  would 
laugh  that  hearty  laugh  of  his  back  into  the  world 
again. 

Henley  is  nowhere  now  except  that,  red-faced 


302  First  and  Last  Things 

and  jolly  like  an  October  sunset,  "October  mild 
and  boon"  he  leans  over  a  gate  at  Worthing 
after  a  long  day  of  picnicking  at  Clanktonbury 
Ring,  or  sits  at  his  Woking  table  praising  and 
quoting  The  Admirable  Baskville,  or  blue-shirted 
and  wearing  the  hat  that  Nicholson  has  painted, 
is  thrust  and  lugged  laughing  and  talking  aside 
in  his  bath-chair  along  the  Worthing  esplan- 
acic    •    •    • 

And  Bob  Stevenson  walks  for  ever  about  a 
garden  in  Chiswick,  talking  in  the  dusk.     .     .     . 


§  5- 


The  Consolation  of  Failure. — That  parable 
of  the  talents  I  have  made  such  free  use  of  in  this 
book  has  one  significant  defect.  It  gives  but 
two  cases,  and  three  are  possible.  There  was 
first  the  man  who  buried  his  talent,  and  of  his 
condemnation  we  are  assured.  But  those  others 
all  took  their  talents  and  used  them  courageously 
and  came  back  with  gain.  Was  that  gain  inevi- 
table? Does  courage  always  ensure  us  victory? 
Because  if  that  is  so  we  can  all  be  heroes,  and 
valour  is  the  better  part  of  discretion.  Alas!  the 
faith  in  such  magic  dies.  What  of  the  possible 
case  of  the  man  who  took  his  two  or  three  talents 
and  invested  them  as  best  he  could  and  was  de- 
ceived or  heedless  and  lost  them,  interest  and 
principal  together? 

There  is  something  harder  to  face  than  death, 
and  that  is  the  realisation  of  failure  and  mis- 
directed effort  and  wrong-doing. 

Faith  is  no  Open  Sesame  to  right-doing,  much 

less  is  it  the  secret  of  success.     The  service  of 

God  on  earth  is  no  processional  triumph.     What 

303 


304  First  and  Last  Things 

if  one  does  wrong  so  extremely  as  to  condemn 
one's  life,  to  make  oneself  part  of  the  refuse  and 
not  of  the  building?  Or  what  if  one  is  misjudged, 
or  it  may  be  too  pitilessly  judged,  and  one's  co- 
operation despised  and  the  help  one  brought 
becomes  a  source  of  weakness?  Or  suppose  that 
the  fine  scheme  one  made  lies  shattered  or  wrecked 
by  one's  own  act,  or  through  some  hidden  blemish 
one's  offering  is  rejected  and  flung  back  and  one 
is  thrust  out? 

So  in  the  end  it  may  be  you  or  I  will  find  we 
have  been  anvil  and  not  hammer  in  the  Purpose 
of  God. 

Then  indeed  will  come  the  time  for  Faith,  for 
the  last  work  of  Faith,  to  say  still  steadfastly, 
disgraced  or  dying,  defeated  or  discredited,  that 
all  is  well. 

"This  and  not  that  was  my  appointed  work, 
and  this  I  had  to  be." 


§6. 


The  Last  Confession. — So  these  broken  con- 
fessions and  statements  of  mood  and  attitude 
come  to  an  end. 

But  at  this  end,  since  I  have,  I  perceive,  run  a 
little  into  a  pietistic  strain,  I  must  repeat  again 
how  provisional  and  personal  I  know  all  these 
things  to  be.  I  began  by  disavowing  ultimates. 
My  beliefs,  my  dogmas,  my  rules,  they  are  made 
for  my  campaigning  needs,  like  the  knapsack 
and  water-bottle  of  a  Cockney  soldier  invading 
some  stupendous  mountain  gorge.  About  him 
are  fastnesses  and  splendours,  torrents  and  cata- 
racts, glaciers  and  untrodden  snows.  He  comes 
tramping  on  heel-worn  boots  and  ragged  socks. 
Beauties  and  blue  mysteries  shine  upon  him  and 
appeal  to  him,  the  enigma  of  beauty  smiling  the 
faint  strange  smile  of  Leonardo's  Monna  Lisa. 
He  sees  a  light  on  the  grass  like  music;  and  the 
blossom  on  the  trees  against  the  sky  brings  him 
near  weeping.  Such  things  come  to  him,  give 
themselves  to  him.     I  do  not  know  why  he  should 

not  in  response  fling  his  shabby  gear  aside  and 
30  305 


So6  First  and  Last  Things 

behave  like  a  god;  I  only  know  that  he  does  not 
do  so.  His  grunt  of  appreciation  is  absurd,  his 
speech  goes  like  a  crippled  thing — and  withal, 
and  partly  by  virtue  of  the  knapsack  and  water- 
bottle,  he  is  conqueror  of  the  valley.  The  valley 
is  his  for  the  taking. 

There  is  a  duality  in  life  that  I  cannot  express 
except  by  such  images  as  this,  a  duality  so  that 
we  are  at  once  absurd  and  full  of  sublimity,  and 
most  absurd  when  we  are  most  anxious  to  render 
the  real  splendours  that  pervade  u*»  This  du- 
plicity in  life  seems  to  me  at  times  ineradicable, 
at  times  like  the  confusing  of  something  essen- 
tially simple,  like  the  reduplication  of  something 
seen  through  a  doubly  refracting  medium.  You 
think  then  that  you  have  only  to  turn  the  crystal 
of  Iceland  spar  about  in  order  to  have  the  whole 
thing  plain.  But  you  never  get  it  plain.  I  have 
been  doing  my  halting  utmost  to  get  down  sin- 
cerely and  simply  my  vision  of  life  and  duty.  I 
have  permitted  myself  no  defensive  restraints! 
I  have  shamelessly  written  my  starkest,  and  it  is 
plain  to  me  that  a  smile  that  is  not  mine  plays 
over  my  most  urgent  passages.  There  is  a 
rebellious  rippling  of  the  grotesque  under  our 
utmost  tragedy  and  gravity.  One's  martialled 
phrases  grimace  as  one  turns  and  wink  at  the 


Some  Personal  Things  307 

reader.  None  the  less  they  signify.  Do  you 
note  how  in  this  that  I  have  written,  such  a  word 
as  Believer  will  begin  to  wear  a  capital  letter  and 
give  itself  solemn  ridiculous  airs?  It  does  not 
matter.  It  carries  its  message  for  all  that  neces- 
sary superficial  absurdity. 

Thought  has  made  me  shameless.  It  does 
not  matter  at  last  at  all  if  one  is  a  little  harsh  or 
indelicate  or  ridiculous  if  that  also  is  in  the 
mystery  of  things. 

Behind  everything  I  perceive  the  smile  that 
makes  all  effort  and  discipline  temporary,  all  the 
stress  and  pain  of  life  endurable.  In  the  last 
resort  I  do  not  care  whether  I  am  seated  on  a 
throne  or  drunk  or  dying  in  a  kitchen.  I  follow 
my  leading.  In  the  ultimate  I  know,  though  I 
cannot  prove  my  knowledge  in  any  way  what- 
ever, that  everything  is  right  and  all  things  mine. 


THE    END. 


X3WVERSITY  °JERKELEy 


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